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THE PROGRESS OF 
A UNITED PEOPLE 



CENTURY READINGS 

IN 

UNITED STATES HISTORY 

A series, made up from the best on this subject 
in The Century and St. Nicholas, for students 
of the upper grammar grades and the first year 
high school. Profusely illustrated. 

EXPLORERS AND SETTLERS 

THE COLONISTS AND THE REVOLUTION 

A NEW NATION 

THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

THE CIVIL WAR 

THE PROGRESS OF A UNITED PEOPLE 

12mo. About 225 pages each. $.50 net. 

THE CENTURY CO. 




The Oregon joins the fleet and salutes the flagship. 

(See page 78) 



CENTURY READINGS IN UNITED STATES HISTORY 

THE PROGRESS OF 
A UNITED PEOPLE 



EDITED BY 

CHARLES L. BARSTOW 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1912 



t 



Copyright, 191 2, by 
The Century Co. 

PMblished May, jgi2 



gC!.A3l6031 
\ 



CONTENTS 



"{ 



Progress Since the War 

Reconstruction General Robert E. Lee 

A Yankee Teacher in the South 

Elizabeth G. Rice . 
The Ku Klux Klan . . . . D. L. Wilson . . 
Civil Service Reform .... George IV. Curtis . 
The Bosses and the People . . Joseph B. Bishop . 
jMr. Cleveland and the Civil Service 

Richard Watson Gild 
The Conquest of Arid America William E. Smythe 

On Conservation Theodore Roosevelt 

Indian Warfare G. W. Baird . . 

Custer's Last Battle . . . . E. S. Godfrey . . 
Brief Account of the Spanish War 

William McKinley 
The Oregon's Great Voyage . . Edzvard W. Eberle 

The Battle of Manila Bay . . 

Cutting a Hemisphere in Two . George E. Walsh . 
The Panama Canal .... William B. Parsons 
The Wright Brothers' Aeroplane 

Orville and Wilbur Wright 
The Western Railroad . . . Ray Stannard Baker . .. 
The Associated Press . . . Melville E. Stone . . . 
The Growth of the United States 

Francis A. Walker . 
The Twelfth Census (1900) . EI on. W. R. Merriam . . 
Civic Improvement ...... Sylvester Baxter . 

Peace Versus War Andrew Carnegie . . . 

Three Wars Prevented ... 



Contents 



PAGE 

An Early American Described . /. Hector St. John de Crevecocvir 194 

New Americans Wardon A. Curtis .... 198 

The American Business Man . A. Barton Hepburn .... 203 

The American Spirit . . . . S. E. Forman 206 

The American of the Future . Brander Matthezvs .... 210 



Acknowledgment is made of the courtesy of Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company 
in permitting the use of Whittier's " Centennial Hymn "; and of Messrs. Harper & 
Brothers for permission to use the article " Civil Service Reform." 



NOTE TO VOLUME VI 

This volume differs from the others of the series in deal- 
ing with the present and future as well as the past. 

In so far as it touches upon the problems and duties of 
the present-day American, it partakes of the nature of a 
civic reader, and supplies a kind of material for which there 
has been a wide demand. 



THE PROGRESS OF A UNITED PEOPLE 



"CENTENNIAL HYMN" (1876) 
By John Greenleaf Whittier 

Our fathers' God ! from out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand, 
We meet to-day, united, free, 
And loyal to our land and Thee, 
To thank Thee for the era done, 
And trust Thee for the opening one. 

Thou, who hast here in concord furled 
The war flags of a gathered world. 
Beneath our Western skies fulfil 
The Orient's mission of good-will. 
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece, 
Send back its Argonauts of peace. 

For art and labor met in truce. 
For beauty made the bride of use. 
We thank Thee ; but, withal, we crave 
The austere virtues strong to save. 
The honor proof to place or gold. 
The manhood never bought nor sold ! 

Oh, make Thou us, through centuries long, 
In peace secure, in justice strong; 
Around our gift of freedom draw 
The safeguards of Thy righteous law: 
And, cast in some diviner mold, 
Let the new cycle shame the old ! 



By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 



THE PROGRESS OF A UNITED 
PEOPLE 

PROGRESS SINCE THE WAR 

The progress of our country since the early days of the 
Civil War has been so great in so many dififerent directions, 
that it can only be hinted at in the little space at our dis- 
posal. 

The following table, prepared for '' Forman's History of 
the United States " will be helpful in making comparisons 
along the lines of agriculture, manufacturing, mining and 
commerce : 



TABLE OF PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES SINCE i860. 

Items i860 1880 1900 1908 

1. Farms and farm 

property .... $7,980,493,000 $12,180,501,538 $20,514,001,538 $28,000,000,000 

2. Farm products. 1,910,000,000 2,212,540,927 3,764,177,706 7,778,000,000 

3. Products of man- 

ufacturing .. 1,885,861,670 5,369.579.171 13.014.287,498 14,802,147,087 

4. Imports of mer- 

chandise 353.616,119 667,594,746 849,941,184 1,194,341,792 

5. Exports of mer- 

chandise 333,576,037 835.630,658 1,394,483,082 1,860,773,346 

6. Miles of rail- „ ^ , 

road 30,626 93,267 198,964 236,949 

7. Salaries for pub- , ^ o 

lie schools .. . 37,832,506 137,687,746 196,980,919^ 

8. Population .... 3i,443,32i 50,i55,7o3 76,303,307 87,189,392* 

9. Immigrants ar- „ g_ 

rived 150,237 457.257 448,572 782,8/0^ 

10. Wealth 16,159,616,000 42,642,000,000 88,517,306,775 120,000,000,000* 

* Estimated. 



3 



4 The Progress of a United People 

Not only in amounts, which can be shown by figures, but 
in methods, has progress been marvelous. 

In agriculture the early machinery has been replaced by 
modern devices so that one man can do the work of many. 
The same is true in regard to nearly all kinds of manufac- 




The Santa Maria, The Mayflower, The Lusitania, The Savannah, 

93 feet long. 70 feet long. 790 feet long. 100 feet long. 

An ocean steamship of to-day as compared with early ships. 

turing. We are the greatest mining nation in the world 
and we lead all others in the production of petroleum, 
lead and silver. 

Foreigners, who are not always ready to give us due 
credit for our progress, readily- admit that we are an in- 
ventive nation, and we may all be justly proud of the 
American genius and enterprise which united the Old World 
with the New by means of the Atlantic Cable (1866) and 
of our part in the invention of the telegraph, the telephone 
and the wireless message. 

Our progress in electricity is worthy of note. Electric 
lighting, electric cable-cars, the X-ray and many other 
applications of electricity to health and daily life have 
greatly increased the average comforts of living. The 
average American home is more convenient to live in than 
the average home abroad. Our bath-rooms and other con- 
veniences make life safer as well as more pleasant. 

The motor-car has changed the appearance of our streets 
and roads since i860, and though not an unmixed good it 



Progress Since the War 5 

may be made so in the future. The Wright Brothers' 
aeroplane places America nearly on a par with other nations 
in the conquest of the air. In point of wealth we are the 
richest nation of the earth. 

For the most part we do not own the great vessels that 
carry us abroad and handle our commerce. But we use 
them freely and the contrast of the modern vessel with 
that of war-times is as great as any other contrast between 
the two epochs. But our railways are our own and we 
have more mileage than all Europe put together, two-thirds 
of it built since the War. 

In our material development, the addition of great areas 
to our national domain in the conquest of the arid West 
by means of irrigation is much more wonderful and credit- 
able than the addition of territory by conquest would be. 

By conquest, too, we have added in this same period 
many equatorial islands and at the same time many prob- 
lems as to their government and betterment, and unknown 
responsibilities for their future. In this the record of our 
sailors and soldiers is just cause for pride. 

Perhaps the longest feather in- our cap, in a material way, 
is the digging of the Panama Canal, one of the greatest 
works ever undertaken by man, and now being carried 
rapidly to a* successful conclusion. 

We might pause here and say that material progress is 
not everything. 

When you travel in Europe you will find plenty of people 
to tell you that Americans have been so busy getting dollars 
that they have no character, no art, no architecture, no 
literature, no philosophy, no real scientists, no honesty in 
business, no justice in the courts and no manners except 
bad ones; and that although the country has beautiful 



6 The Progress of a United People 

scenery, it has only ugly cities, houses and villages. These 
Europeans will also tell you, or each other, that there is no 
such thing as an American. 

You will be surprised to find these opinions quite gen- 
erally held and by intelligent people who have visited these 
shores. 

There is at least a partial answer to all these reproaches : 
to some of them a full and complete answer. But it is a 
good thing to take a comparative view of such matters. 
And if we do this, we shall find ourselves obliged to admit 
that the Old World, with its hundreds or thousands of 
years of start has arrived at some results that are better 
than we can yet show in America. There is no more mis- 
taken '' patriotism " than the kind which simply shouts and 
boasts. There is no better kind than that which sets about 
to better what is wrong. 

The following pages will suggest some reasons for 
modesty and effort as well as for congratulation and praise. 










RECONSTRUCTION 
By General Robert E. Lee 

\ I have received your letter of 
the 23d lilt. [August, 1865], and 
in reply will state the course I 
have pursued under circumstances 
similar to your ov^n, and will 
leave you to judge of its propriety. 
Like yourself, I have, since the 
cessation of hostilities, advised all 
with whom I have conversed on 
the subject, who come within the 
terms of the President's procla- 
mations, to take the oath of al- 
legiance, and accept in good faith 
the amnesty offered. But I have gone 
recommended to those who were excluded from their bene- 
fits, to make application under the proviso of the proclama- 
tion of the 29th of May, to be embraced in its provisions. 
Both classes, in order to be restored to their former rights 
and privileges were required to perform a certain act, and I 
do not see that an acknowledgment of fault is expressed in 
one more than the other. The war being at an end, the 
Southern States having laid down their arms, and the 
questions at issue between them and the Northern States 
having been decided, I believe it to be the duty of every one 

7 




Robert E. Lee. 
further, and have 



8 The Progress of a United People 

to unite in the restoration of the country, and the reestab- 
lishment of peace and harmony. These considerations gov- 
erned me in the counsels I gave to others, and induced me 
on the 13th of June to make appHcation to be included in 
the terms of the amnesty proclamation. I have received 
no answer, and cannot inform you what has been the de- 
cision of the President. But, whatever that may be, I do 
not see how the course I have recommended and practised 
can prove detrimental to the former President of the Con- 
federate States. It appears to me that the allayment of 
passion, the dissipation of prejudice, and the restoration of 
reason, will alone enable the people of the country to acquire 
a true knowledge and form a correct judgment of the events 
of the past four years. It will, I think, be admitted that 
Mr. Davis has done nothing more than all the citizens of the 
Southern States, and should not be held accountable for acts 
performed by them in the exercise of what had been con- 
sidered by them unquestionable right. I have too exalted 
an opinion of the American people to believe that they 
will consent to injustice ; and it is only necessary, in my 
opinion, that truth should be known, for the rights of every 
one to be secured. 



A YANKEE TEACHER IN THE SOUTH 

an experience in the early days of reconstruction 
By Elizabeth G. Rice 

Six weeks from the day that General Beauregard evacu- 
ated Charleston, a party of New England men and women, 
including myself, entered the city as volunteer teachers for 
the colored schools that had been organized under the 
superintendence of Mr. James Redpath. We had been sent 
out by a society in Boston, wdio paid us a small sum above 
our necessary expenses, the government providing, as far 
as possible, transportation, rations, and military protection. 

Everywhere were to be seen ruins, new and old; and the 
sense of disaster was greatly increased by the fires that took 
place the night that the city was evacuated. When the 
Union troops entered, their first effort was to extinguish 
these fires. Then the officers took possession of the vacant 
houses, which had already been emptied of everything of 
much value. Our party of twelve looked about to find 
a vacant house that pleased us, and soon selected a large 
brownstone mansion. Only a few large articles remained, 
such as sideboard and dining-table, and a few bedsteads 
and wardrobes. The fine library, which must have num- 
bered several thousand volumes, had been taken away 
by our troops only the day before, — so the colored people 
on the place told us, — and busts of Roman emperors still 

9 



10 The Progress of a United People 

stood surmounting the empty shelves. In the courtyard 
were two small brick houses for the servants, and a well- 
yard where half a dozen bloodhounds lived in kennels, con- 
tributing much to our sense of safety. A former steward, 
nearly white, was in charge of the place. He felt kindly 
toward us, as w^e were on a mission to his race, and was 
very glad to remain for wages. To complete the furnish- 
ing, we did as others — got a dray and foraged from house 
to house; if one seemed deserted, w-e roamed over it, and 
if we found a stray chair or table, we had it put on our dray. 
None of these articles were treasures, except in the sense 
that any table or chair was better than none. One day 
we mentioned to an officer that we had no mirror, and 
within a few hours he surprised us by sending an elegant 
glass in a massive frame, that rec[uired four men to carry 
it up the broad stairs. Dishes were particularly scarce, and 
some white-and-gold china sent us by an officer was a great 
luxury. 

After we had lived in the house two months we received 
a call from a member of the family that owned it, who told 
us of his satisfaction in knowing that his house was oc- 
cupied by teachers and ladies rather than by officers. He 
assured us that he should do nothing to molest us. He 
ended his call by asking permission to visit his garden and 
gather some flowers. Later we saw our steward go off 
with him, and not long after the steward came back in a 
state of intoxication. The next day, w^hile we were at 
school, two comfortable stuffed chairs, of which we were 
proud, disappeared from the parlor, and our steward said 
that this caller of the day before had sent for them. They 
had never belonged to him, but I suppose he shared our 
admiration for them. We never saw him or them again, 



A Yankee Teacher in the South ii 

but we left him an assortment of furniture when, several 
months later, we all returned North for the summer. 

All the available school buildings were put in use as fast 
as teachers, either Northern or native, could be found. 
Pupils who did not know a letter of the alphabet or a figure 
in arithmetic were separated from those who did, and those 
who could read from those who could not. Our places as 
teachers were assigned by lot, and the task that fell to me 
was a hard one. My school met in the third floor of the 
fine old State Normal School building. The room had 
formerly been used as a hall for lectures, and was fitted 
with settees for four hundred. There I never had a pupil 
who knew the alphabet or could count correctly to ten. 

Charleston was a great gathering-place for the suddenly 
freed people from plantations for miles and miles around. 
To them freedom meant liberty to rove about as they liked, 
and they wandered aimlessly into the city by hundreds and 
thousands, destitute of nearly everything. Pigs seemed 
to be a favorite possession, and many a freedman made his 
first tour of the city streets with a squealing pig under his 
arm. Government and the Freedmen's Bureau sent these 
homeless crowds to camps on James Island, and fed and 
cared for them as best they could. To them being free 
meant being educated like white men. One of their first 
impulses, therefore, was to go to school. 

]\Iany among those who had been brought up in towns 
could read, but the great throng of plantation and rice- 
swamp workers were in the densest ignorance, and often 
spoke such bad English that it was impossible to get at their 
meaning. As they passed in crowds through the city, many 
would stop at the school doors and ask admittance. Any 
applicant, man, woman, or child, not knowing the alphabet, 



12 The Progress of a United People 

was sent to my school; and when the four hundred seats 
were full, as they always were, subsequent comers had to 
be sent away. Consequently my room was filled each day 
with a constantly changing set of people. Many, probably, 
never came the second time. They had no idea of school 
life, and found sitting still and mental application the most 
laborious task they had ever been set to do. They wanted 
to talk, or to get up and walk round the room; and they 
fell asleep in their seats, even falling upon the floor, as 
easily as babes. My room was searched weekly for de- 
serters from the army, so many men were there among the 
women and children. 

My own rearing had been in a quiet New England town, 
and I hardly think I had ever seen a hundred colored people 
when I went South on this mission. My sense of helpless- 
ness was complete when I first stood on the platform and 
faced the dark crowd in motley apparel. I hardly knew 
whether to cry or laugh. There seemed to be no other 
individuality than sex. All the men looked just alike, and 
so did all the women and girls, except when some peculiar 
arrangement of the kinks of curls on their heads was dis- 
tinctive. A shell fired during the bombardment had torn 
an opening in the wall and shattered every pane of glass, 
but a less perfect system of ventilation would not have 
sufficed. The school session lasted only three hours each 
day, and that included a generous recess, for the confine- 
ment was as tedious to those grown-up children as to an 
ordinary three-year-old. 

A soldier was detailed daily to stand at the outer en- 
trance of the building to keep out unruly persons, and an- 
other was stationed by my door on the upper floor, and 
sometimes I had to call upon him for aid in ejecting dis- 



A Yankee Teacher in the South 13 

tiirbers. There was a foolish colored boy of large size 
who used to slip in whenever he could. Usually he be- 
haved very well. One day, however, George Washing- 
ton (for that was his name) suddenly appeared in front of 
the school wuth a sword which he brandished at me. He 
had on epaulets and wore the red sash of an officer. The 
figure we cut as he dashed about waving his sword and I 
dodged round my desk evading it and screaming to the sen- 
tinel to come in, must have been very ludicrous. Finally 
George Washington was taken captive and removed, and I 
gave strict orders that he was never to pass the outer door 
again. 

I was given the assistance of eight colored girls who had 
had some schooling. One of them had been a teacher and 
was really helpful. To each of these eight assistants I 
assigned the care of fifty pupils. I printed the alphabet 
and a few numerals with chalk on blackboards in each of 
the four corners of the room, and four assistants alternated 
their sections in classes of twenty-five each, standing before 
these boards and trying to make them see the different 
shapes of the letters and learn their names. Two of the 
teachers heard their classes in two small anterooms, and 
two more on the broad landing of the staircase entry, while 
I tried to keep order among the two hundred who were 
resting in their seats, and conducted general exercises be- 
tween the changing of the classes. 

The problem of keeping order in such a body was serious. 
It is fair to say that, in a general way, all were anxious to 
please me and to learn; but they reasoned that, if they were 
free, they could talk when they wanted to, or they could 
go out and come in as they liked. The very first morning 
of my taking charge I was horror-stricken to see two big 



14 The Progress of a United People 

boys rush at each other, and before the sentinel at the door 
could interfere, one had received a fearful cut in the face 
with a knife. I found it impossible to enforce authority 
without using punishments such as sitting on the floor in 
front of my desk with legs kept straight and feet turned 
up, or standing and toeing a line. They seemed to dislike 
having attention drawn to their feet, which were always 
bare. Occasionally I found use for a small ratan which 
some one had left in the teacher's desk. There were two 
brothers, Josiah and Tony, who came regularly to school, 
though I do not think they learned a thing. But no boys 
were ever more mischievous than these. They were evi- 
dently familiar with the uses of the rod, and would scream 
and writhe as if in agony, and beg for mercy, even before 
the first application was made. I found the efifect of their 
piteous cries very salutary on the general discipline, and 
that the measure of the awe inspired was more the result 
of their loud outcries than of my own control. So it came 
to be a joke in our building that when visitors of apparent 
consequence were seen coming, the outer sentinel would 
send the brief message, " Whip Josiah," as he, being the 
older and more practised in his howling, made consequently 
a larger impression on the school. If the message was 
simply, " Whip Tony," I knew that in the sentinel's estima- 
tion the visitors were of minor distinction. Of course the 
suggestion was not often adopted, though I doubt if there 
were, at any time, five consecutive minutes in which they 
both did not richly deserve a thrashing. 

One thing my pupils did admirably : they sang their plan- 
tation melodies with the strange words and plaintive 
choruses, swaying their bodies as they sang, in wonderful 
time and tune. There was a little peculiarity common to 



A Yankee Teacher in the South 15 

them all. They would come to me and ask to go home, 
saying they had the stomachache. This complaint seemed 
to be so remarkably prevalent that finally I began to investi- 
gate, and found that it was a generic term for every kind 
of ailment from head to feet. 

The days grew steadily hotter, and the sleepy crowd grew 
sleepier as they sat wearily on their settees in school. It 
was no use to give them books, for they could not read a 
w^ord, and we had few picture-books or illustrated papers. 
We taught on with flagging courage till early in June, when 
we were very glad to avail ourselves of a government per- 
mit for transportation at half-rates to New York. Some 
teachers returned in the fall to continue the work, which 
went on under more usual and orderly conditions, until the 
military rule was over and the former civil authority was 
resumed in the city, and with it the care of its own school 
system. 




THE KU KLUX KLAN 
By D. L. Wilson 

No chapter in American history is more strange than the 
one which bears for a title : '' Ku Kkix Klan." The secret 
history of the Invisible Empire, as the Klan was also called, 
has never been written. The Klan disappeared from 
Southern life as it came into it, shrouded in deepest mys- 
tery. Its members would not disclose its secrets; others 
could not. Even the investigating committee appointed by 
Congress, after tedious and diligent inquiry, was baffled. 
The voluminous reports containing the results of the com- 
mittee's labors do not tell when and where and how the Ku 
Klux Klan originated. 

The writer does not profess to be able to reveal the secret 
signs, grips, and pass-words of the order. These have 
never been disclosed, and probably never will be. 

A wave of excitement, spreading by contagion till the 
minds of a wdiole people are in a ferment, is an event of 
frequent occurrence. The Ku Klux movement was pecu- 
liar by reason of the causes which produced and fed the 
excitement. It illustrates the weird and irresistible power 
of the unknown and mysterious over the minds of men of 
all classes and conditions in life; and it illustrates how men 
by circumstances and conditions, in part of their own crea- 
tion, may be carried away from their moorings and drifted 
along in a course against which reason and judgment 
protest. 

i6 



The Ku Klux Klan 17 

The Ku Klux Klan was the outgrowth of peculiar con- 
ditions, social, civil, and political, which prevailed at the 
South from 1865 to 1869. It was as much a product of 
those conditions as malaria is of a swamp and sun heat. 
Its birthplace was Pulaski, the capital of Giles, one of the 
southern tier of counties in Middle Tennessee. Pulaski is 
a town of two thousand five hundred to three thousand in- 
habitants. Previous to the war the people possessed wealth 
and culture. The first was lost in the general wreck. 
Now the most intimate association with them fails to dis- 
close a trace of the diabolism which, according to the popu- 
lar idea, one would expect to find characterizing the people 
among whom the Ku Klux Klan originated. A male col- 
lege and a female seminary are located at Pulaski, and re- 
ceive liberal patronage. It is a town of churches. 

There, in 1866, the name Ku Klux first fell from human 
lips. There began a movement which in a short time spread 
as far north as Virginia and as far south as Texas, and 
which for a period convulsed the country. Proclamations 
wxre fulminated against the Klan by the President and by 
the Governors of States; and hostile statutes were enacted 
both by State and national legislatures, for there had be- 
come associated with the name of Ku Klux Klan gross 
mistakes and lawless deeds of violence. 

During the entire period of the Klan's organized ex- 
istence Pulaski continued to be its central seat of authority, 
and some of its highest officers resided there. 

When the war ended in 1865 the young men of Pulaski 
who escaped death on the battle-field returned home and 
passed through a period of enforced inactivity. In some 
respects it w^as more trying than the ordeal of war which 
lay behind them. The reaction w^hich followed the excite- 



l8 The Progress of a United People 

ment of army scenes and service was intense. There was 
nothing to reHeve it. They could not engage in active 
business or professional pursuits. Their business habits 
were broken up. None had capital with which to conduct 
agricultural pursuits or to engage in mercantile enterprises. 
And this restlessness was made more intense by the total 
lack of the amusements and social diversions which prevail 
wherever society is in a normal condition. One evening in 
June, 1866, a few of these young men met in the office of 
one of the most prominent members of the Pulaski bar. In 
the course of the conversation one of the number said : 
" Boys, let us get up a club or a society of some descrip- 
tion." 

The suggestion was discussed with enthusiasm. Before 
they separated, it was agreed to invite a few others whose 
names were mentioned to join them, and to meet again the 
next evening at the same place. At the appointed time 
eight or ten young men had assembled. The club was 
organized by the election of a chairman and a secretary. 
There was entire unanimity among the members in regard 
to the end in view, which was diversion and amusement. 
The evening was spent discussing the best means of attain- 
ing the object in view. Two committees were appointed, 
one to select a name, the other to prepare a set of rules for 
the government of the society, and a ritual for the initiation 
of new members. Then the club adjourned, to meet the 
following week to hear and act upon the reports of these 
committees. Before the arrival of the appointed time for 
the next meeting one of the wealthiest and most prominent 
citizens of Pulaski went on a business trip to Columbus, 
Miss., taking his family with him. Before leaving he in- 
vited one of the leading spirits of the new society to take 



The Ku Klux Klan 19 

charge of and sleep at his house in his absence. This young 
man invited his comrades to join him there; so the place of 
meeting was changed from the law office to his residence. 
The owner of the house outlived the Ku Klux Klan, and 
died ignorant of the fact that his house was the place where 
its organization was fully effected. This residence after- 
ward came into the possession of Judge H. M. Spofford, 
of Spofford-Kellogg fame. It was his home at the time 
of his death, and is still owned by his widow ( 1884). 

The committee appointed to select a name reported that 
they had found the task difficult, and had not made a selec- 
tion. They explained that they had been trying to dis- 
cover or invent a name which would be in some degree sug- 
gestive of the character and objects of the society. They 
mentioned several names which they had been considering. 
In this number was the name " Kukloi," from the Greek 
word kvkXo^ (kuklos), meaning a band or circle. At men- 
tion of this, some one cried out: 

" Call it Ku Klux!" 

" Klan " at once suggested itself, and was added to com- 
plete the alliteration. So, instead of adopting a name, as 
was the first intention, which had a definite meaning, they 
chose one which to the proposer and to every one else was 
absolutely meaningless. This trival and apparently acci- 
dental incident had a most important bearing on the future 
of the organization so singularly named. Looking back 
over the history of the Klan, and at the causes under which 
it developed, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the 
order would never have grown to the proportions which it 
afterward assumed, or wielded the power it did, had it not 
borne this name, or some other equally as meaningless and 
mysterious. Had they called themselves the " Jolly 



20 The Progress of a United People 

Jokers," or the " Adelphi," or by some similar appellation, 
the organization would doubtless have had no more than 
the mere local and ephemeral existence which those who 
organized it contemplated for it. 

The Klan was, at first, very careful in regard to the 
character of the men admitted. Rash and imprudent men, 
such as could not be fully relied upon to keep their obliga- 
tion to profound secrecy, were excluded. Nor were those 
received who were addicted to the use of intoxicants. 
Later on in the history they were not so careful ; but in the 
earlier period of its existence the Klan was composed of 
men of good character and good habits. In some instances 
persons of objectionable character were persistent, even to 
annoyance, in their efforts to gain admission to the order. 

During the fall and winter of 1866 the growth of the 
Klan was rapid. It spread over a wide extent of territory. 
Sometimes, by a sudden leap, it appeared in localities far dis- 
tant from any existing '' dens." A stranger from West 
Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, or Texas, visiting in a 
neighborhood where the order prevailed, would be initiated, 
and on his departure carry with him permission to estab- 
lish a " den " at home. In fact, it was done often without 
such permission. The connecting link between these 
" dens " was very fragile. By a sort of tacit agreement 
the Pulaski Klan was regarded as the source of power and 
authority. The Grand Cyclops of this " den " was virtually 
the ruler of the order; but as he had no method of com- 
munication with subjects or subordinates, and no way in 
which to enforce his mandates, his authority was more 
fancy than fact. But so far there had appeared no need 
for rigid rules and close supervision. The leading spirits 
of the Ku Klux were still contemplating nothing more seri- 



The Ku Klux Klan 21 

Oils than amusement. They enjoyed the baffled curiosity 
and wild speculations of a mystified public even more than 
the rude sport afforded by the ludicrous initiations. Such 
is the account of the Ku Klux Klan in the first period of its 
history, from June, 1866, to April, 1867. Yet all this time 
it was gradually and in a very natural way taking on new 
features not at first remotely contemplated by the origina- 
tors of the order; features which finally transformed the Ku 
Klux Klan into a band of " Regulators." 

The transformation was effected by the combined opera- 
tion of three causes: (i) the impression made by the order 
upon the minds of those who united with it; (2) the im- 
pression produced upon the public by its weird and mys- 
terious ways; (3) the anomalous and peculiar condition of 
affairs in the South at this time. 

The mystery and secrecy with which the Klan veiled it- 
self made a singular impression on the minds of many who 
united with it. The most common conclusion reached by 
those whose attention was attracted to the Klan was that 
it contemplated some great and important mission ; its rapid 
extension was regarded as confirmatory of this conclusion; 
and, when admitted to membership, this impression was 
deepened rather than dispelled by what they saw and heard. 
There was not a w^ord in the ritual, or in the obligation, or 
in any part of the ceremony, to favor it ; but the impression 
still remained that this mysteriousness and secrecy, the high- 
sounding titles of the officers, the grotesque dress of the 
members, and the formidable obligation to profound 
secrecy, all meant more than mere sport. This conviction 
was ineradicable, and the attitude of many of its members 
continued to be that of expecting great developments. 
Each had his own speculations as to what was to be the 



22 The Progress of a United People 

character of the serious work which the Klan was to do. 
It was an unheahhy and dangerous state of mind; bad re- 
sults very naturally followed from it. 

At that time the throes of the great revolution were set- 
tling down to quiet. The almost universal disposition of 
the better class of the people was to accept the arbitrament 
which the sword had accorded them. On this point there 
was practical unanimity. Those who had opportunity to 
do so engaged at once in agricultural, professional, or busi- 
ness pursuits. But there were two causes of vexation and 
exasperation which the people were in no good mood to 
bear. One of these causes related to that class of men who, 
like scum, were thrown to the surface in the great upheaval. 
Most of them had played traitor to both sides; on that ac- 
count they were despised. Had they been Union men from 
conviction, that would have been forgiven them. But they 
were now engaged in keeping alive discord and strife be- 
tween the sections, as the only means of preventing them- 
selves from sinking back into the obscurity from which they 
had been upheaved. They were doing this in a way not 
only malicious, but exceedingly exasperating. The second 
disturbing element was the negroes. Their transition from 
slavery to citizenship was sudden. They were not only not 
fitted for the cares of self-control and maintenance so sud- 
denly thrust upon them, but they entered their new role 
in life under the delusion that freedom meant license. 
They regarded themselves as freed men, not only from 
bondage to former masters, but from the common and 
ordinary obligations of citizenship. Many of them looked 
upon obedience to the laws of the State — which had been 
framed by their former owners — as in some measure a 



The Ku Klux Klan 23 

compromise of the rights with which they had been in- 
vested. 

The administration of civil law was only partly reestab- 
lished. On that account, and for other reasons mentioned, 
there was an amount of disorder and violence prevailing 
over the country which has never been equaled at any period 
of its history. The depredations on property by theft, and 
by wanton destruction for the gratification of petty revenge, 
were to the last degree annoying. A large part of these 
depredations was the work of bad white men, who ex- 
pected that their lawless deeds would be credited to the 
negroes. 

Until the beginning of 1867 the movements of the Klan 
had been characterized in the main by prudence and discre- 
tion, but there were exceptions. In some cases there had 
been a liberal construction of orders. The limits which it 
had been agreed not to pass had been overstepped. 

The Klan had a large membership ; it exerted a vast and 
terrifying power; but its influence was never at any time 
dependent on, or proportioned to, its membership. It was 
in the mystery in which the comparatively few enshrouded 
themselves. It is an error to suppose that the entire male 
population of the South were Ku Klux, or even a majority 
of the people were privy to its secrets and in sympathy with 
its extremest measures. To many of them, perhaps to a 
majority, the Ku Klux Klan was as vague, impersonal, and 
mysterious as to the people of the North or of England; 
they did — do to this day — attribute to it great good. 

For a while after the reorganization of the Klan, those 
concerned for its welfare and right conduct congratulated 



24 The Progress of a United People 

themselves that all was now well. Closer organization and 
stricter official supervision had a restraining influence upon 
the members. Many things seemed to indicate that the fu- 
ture work of the Klan would be wholly good. These hopes 
WQVQ rudely shattered. Before long official supervision 
grew less rigid, or was less regarded. The membership 
was steadily increasing. Among those who were added 
were bad men wdio could not be — at least, were not -— con- 
trolled. In the winter and spring of 1867 and 1868 many 
things were done by members or professed members of the 
Klan which were the subject of universal regret and con- 
demnation. In many ways the grave censure of those who 
had hitherto been its friends w^as evoked against the Klan, 
and occasion was given its enemies to petition for the in- 
tervention of the Government to suppress it. This was 
done. The end came rapidly. 

Tennessee was the first State to pass an anti-Ku Klux 
statute. In September, 1868, Governor Brownlow called 
the Legislature together in extra session to devise measures 
for the suppression of the order. A relentless and bloody 
statute was passed; and to enforce it the Governor was 
authorized, if he deemed it necessary, to declare martial 
law on the infected counties and to call out troops. The 
law passed, and the method of enforcing it increased rather 
than quieted disorder. The statute is long, and, as a wdiole, 
not worth quoting. Its leading provisions were the fol- 
lowing : 

(i) For association or connection with the Ku Klux a fine of 
five hundred dollars and imprisonment in the penitentiary not less 
than five years; and "shall be rendered infamous/' (2) Persons 
impaneled for jury service were required to answer under oath 
whether they were obnoxious to the first section of the act. (3) 



The Ku Klux Klan 25 

Prosecuting attorneys and grand jurors were directed to summon 
persons whom they suspected " or had cause to suspect," and to 
force them to testify what they knew of the Ku Klux. If those 
so summoned failed to appear or refused to testify, the penalty 
was a fine of five hundred dollars. (4) Every " inhabitant " of 
the State was constituted an officer extraordinary, with power 
" to arrest without process " any one known or suspected to be 
a Ku Klux. (5) To feed, lodge, entertain, or conceal a Ku 
Klux exposed the offender to infamy, a fine of five hundred dol- 
lars, and imprisonment for five years. (6) It was made unlawful 
to publish any order emanating from the Klan. (7) There was 
but one clause in the law which bears the semblance of m.ercy. 
Its provisions are so odious as to be shocking. The one way 
by which a man could relieve himself of liability to this law was 
by turning informer. As additional inducement to do this a re- 
ward of half the fine was offered. (8) But, most remarkable of 
all, the statute was made penal against offenses committed pre- 
vious to its passage. The last section of it reads : " Nothing 
herein contained shall be so construed as to prevent or exempt 
any person heretofore guilty of any of the offenses herein con- 
tained from prosecutions under the law as it now stands." 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 
By George William Curtis 

A vital and enduring reform in administrative methods, 
although it be but a return to the constitutional intention, 
can be accomplished only by the commanding impulse of 
public opinion. Permanence is secured by law, not by in- 
dividual pleasure. But in this country law is only formu- 
lated public opinion. Reform of the civil service does not 
contemplate an invasion of the constitutional prerogative of 
the President and the Senate, nor does it propose to change 
the Constitution by statute. The whole system of the Civil 
Service proceeds, as I said, from the President, and the ob- 
ject of the reform movement is to enable him to fulfil the 
intention of the Constitution by revealing to him the desire 
of the country through the action of its authorized repre- 
sentatives. When the ground-swell of public opinion lifts 
Congress from the rocks, the President will gladly float 
with it into the deep water of wise and patriotic ac- 
tion. . . . 

The root of the complex evil is personal favoritism. 
This produces congressional dictation, senatorial usurpation, 
arbitrary removals, interference in elections, political as- 
sessments, and all the consequent corruption, degradation, 
and danger that experience has disclosed. The method of 
reform, therefore, must be a plan of selection for appoint- 
ment which makes favoritism impossible. The general 
feeling undoubtedly is that this can be accomplished by a 

From Gteorge William Curtis' s Orations and Addresses, Vol. II. Copyright, 1893. by Harper & Brothers. 

26 



Civil Service Reform 27 

fixed limited term. But the terms of most of the offices to 
which the President and the Senate appoint, and upon which 
the myriad minor places in the service depend, have been 
fixed and limited for sixty years, yet it is during that very 
period that the chief evils of personal patronage have ap- 
peared. . . . 

If, then, legitimate cause for removal ought to be de- 
termined in public as in private business by the responsible 
appointing powder, it is of the highest public necessity that 
the exercise of that power should be made as absolutely 
honest and independent as possible. But how can it be 
made honest and independent if it is not protected so far 
as practicable from the constant bribery of selfish interest 
and the illicit solicitation of personal influence? The ex- 
perience of our large public patronage offices proves con- 
clusively that the cause of the larger number of removals 
is not dishonesty or incompetency; it is the desire to make 
vacancies to fill. This is the actual cause, whatever cause 
may be assigned. The removals w^ould not be made except 
for the pressure of politicians. But those politicians would 
not press for removals if they could not secure the appoint- 
ment of their favorites. Make it impossible for them to 
secure appointment, and the pressure w^ould instantly dis- 
appear and arbitrary removal cease. 

So long, therefore, as we permit minor appointments to 
be made by mere personal influence and favor, a fixed 
limited term and removal during that term for cause only 
w^ould not remedy the evil, because the incumbents w^ould 
still be seeking influence to secure reappointment, and the as- 
pirants doing the same to replace them. Removal under plea 
of good cause would be as w-anton and arbitrary as it is now, 
unless the power to remove were intrusted to some other 



28 The Progress of a United People 

discretion than that of the superior officer, and in that case 
the struggle for reappointment and the knowledge that re- 
moval for the term was practically impossible would totally 
demoralize the service. To make sure, then, that removals 
shall be made for legitimate cause only, we must provide 
that appointment shall be made only for legitimate 
cause. . . . 

With the instinct of robbers w^ho run with the crowd and 
lustily cry '' Stop thief ! " those who would make the public 
service the monopoly of a few favorites denounce the deter- 
mination to open that service to the whole people as a plan 
to establish an aristocracy. The huge ogre of patronage, 
gnawing at the character, the honor, and the life of the 
country, grimly sneers that the people cannot help them- 
selves and that nothing can be done. But much greater 
things have been done. Slavery was the Giant Despair of 
many good men of the last generation, but slavery was over- 
thrown. If the spoils system, a monster only less threaten- 
ing than slavery, be unconquerable, it is because the country 
has lost its convictions, its courage, and its common-sense. 
" I expect," said the Yankee as he surveyed a stout antago- 
nist, " I expect that you 're pretty ugly, but I cal'late I 'm 
a darned sight uglier." I know that patronage is strong, 
but I believe that the American people are very much 
stronger. 



THE BOSSES AND THE PEOPLE 
By Joseph B. Bishop 

Nothing can be clearer than that boss government is 
destructive of popular government. It concentrates in one 
man, as soon as it reaches perfection, all the powers of the 
State, executive, legislative, and judicial, and this man is 
not chosen by the people for the position. He is an auto- 
crat, or despot, by self -election. He obtains his power by 
means which are not only not authorized by the people, but 
have been declared by them in their laws to be criminal. 
He rules by money corruptly raised and corruptly used. 
He extorts blackmail from corporations which fear his 
power, and with it he solidifies and extends that power. 
He goes with his money into the primaries and nominating 
conventions, and buys aw^ay from the people the selection 
of candidates for office, thus corrupting popular govern- 
ment at its source. His favor and his money are powerful 
enough to elect his candidates to office, and powerful 
enough to prevent the nomination of all whom he dislikes. 
He thus fills the public service with men w^hom he has 
bought to serve him rather than the State ; and they seldom 
or never fail him, for a man who is willing to accept a 
nomination for office under such conditions is not likely to 
be squeamish about his official conduct after election. 

The system acts, in fact, as a complete bar to men of 
character for the public service, and as a magnet for those 
of dull or lax morality. The blackmail revenue of a boss 

29 



30 The Progress of a United People 

has done for the latter what their own abihty and energy 
would never have accomplished, and they look naturally to 
him and his resources as the true source of power, and the 
only one to be feared. This accounts for the extraordinary 
indifference of a boss-controlled legislature to public opin- 
ion. Its members know that they owe their positions en- 
tirely to the boss; that the people who are objecting to their 
conduct would never have chosen them for office; and that 
their continuance in public life depends upon the continu- 
ance of the boss's favor. They know that when the time 
for a renomination comes round their critics will have little 
or no voice in the primaries, and that the blackmail of the 
boss will be the deciding force. Every aspirant for politi- 
cal honors, be it for a membership of the legislature, or for 
a governorship or a judgeship, knows that without the 
favor of the boss he has no hope ; and he cannot obtain that 
favor without giving assurances that, when elected, he will 
follow the wishes of the boss. Slowly but surely the boss 
extends his system till he gets possession of all the func- 
tions of the government. He gets control of the executive 
and the legislative first, and later of the judiciary, and then 
his deadly clutch upon popular sovereignty is complete. 
We have had instances in more than one State, during the 
past year, of the fatal advance upon this final stronghold. 
Not only has the boss been able to make the legislature and 
the governor do his bidding in the face of all opposition, 
while committing assaults upon the people in denying them 
their right to a voice in the conduct of their own aft^airs, 
but he has been able to get from the courts, because of 
new accessions to their benches of men whose nomination 
has been due to his favor, opinions which have sustained 
him in some of his most deadly attacks upon constitutional 



The Bosses and the People 31 

government. If the bench shall really fall into the clutches 
of the blackmailing boss, popular government will cease 
to exist in the State over which he rules. 

The main purpose of this boss coml)ination is to regain 
possession of the offices by either repealing or nullifying 
the civil-service reform laws. All bosses have discovered 
that without the offices it is difficult to keep their machines 
in good running order, even with large amounts of black- 
mail money. They do not enjoy possession of the govern- 
ment unless they can fill its service with their own men. 
They believe that they made an unnecessary blunder when 
they allowed the civil-service reform laws to pass. 

Will the American people consent to allow this condi- 
tion of things to become permanent? Will they permit 
government by blackmail and corruption to be substituted 
for government by the people ? '' There is one thing which 
is worse than corruption," says Lecky, in his *' Democracy 
and Liberty," *' and that is acquiescence in corruption. No 
feature of American life strikes a stranger so powerfully 
as the extraordinary indifference, partly cynicism and partly 
good nature, with which notorious frauds and notorious 
corruption in the sphere of politics are viewed by Ameri- 
can public opinion." So long as this indifference of pub- 
lic opinion continues, just so long will the bosses rule. 
The cause of all the trouble is neglect of the duties of 
citizenship. It is this which enables the bosses to gain pos- 
session of the government, and it is this which enables them 
to continue in possession after the corrupt source of their 
power has been revealed. There is only one remedy, and 
that is resumption of the duties of citizenship. If we de- 
sire to have our public affairs managed in an honest and 
intelligent manner, we must take the trouble to bear our 



32 The Progress of a United People 

part in their management. The bosses will not conduct 
them as we wish them to, save on compulsion, and we have 
been too indifferent or too indolent to exert that compul- 
sion. Occasionally we pass a law designed to put an end 
to some of the worst forms of corruption, and then sit back 
and wait for it to enforce itself. When it does not do this 
we despair of popular government, and doubt whether it is 
really worth while to attempt to do anything to save it. 

There is only one way by which we can get good govern- 
ment, and that is to work for it, not only one year, but 
every year, and to work for it harder than the bosses and 
their followers do. All remedies which have been devised 
for the cure of the ills which flow from neglect of the duties 
of citizenship have failed, and all those which may be de- 
vised hereafter will fail also. If our patriotism, our faith 
in popular government, and our desire for its success be 
not sufficient to induce us to bear our part in the work of 
carrying it forward properly, then it w^ill fail, and the blame 
for its failure will rest no more upon the blackmailing 
bosses than upon ourselves. 



MR. CLEVELAND AND THE CIVIL SERVICE 
By Richard Watson Gilder 

Just before going to Washington the President said to 
me: "Don't you suppose that if I did exactly what you 
Civil Service Reform people want, in every particular, and 
should fail in the great, important 
measures of policy, and let the 
country go to the dogs on the cur- 
rency, you people would be the 
first to say the President had no 
tact ? " I replied that I thought it 
would not come to that — that he 
" would probably do both." 

In the special train on the way 

to the inauguration, Mr. Cleveland 

said to me that nothing would 

please him more than immediately 

to take up matters of government ^ ^, , , 

, , 1, , • 1 r Grover Cleveland, 

and have all the appomtments left 

to a commission ; but he thought we were not ripe for that 

yet. He added that no one believed more completely than 

he in Civil Service Reform. 

I am sure he intended from the beginning to take up the 

extension of the merit system, as he actually did, in due 

order. That was his idea : " One thing at a time," Repeal 

of the Sherman Silver- Purchasing Law ; Tariff Reform ; 

Extension of Civil Service Reform. Independent leaders, 

3 33 




34 The Progress of a United People 

like Carl Schurz, thought this a mistake; that to keep up 
the old system at this time was merely to log-roll for legis- 
lation, to '' purchase votes by patronage." Whatever may 
be said in the way of criticism, and of the numerous ap- 
pointments of '' anti-Cleveland " men at the beginning of 
the second administration, I believe it was all in pursuance 
of the belief that this was the reasonable method — one 
reform at a time; no violent departure from political custom, 
thus creating at once an obstructive Congress. 

In detail this policy sometimes led to unfortunate results. 
It may even possibly have been mistaken as a whole. It led 
to some things that were certainly repugnant to the views 
and tastes of reformers. I am not intending any further 
defense than is implied in the record of the historic fact that 
Cleveland acted according to a well-considered plan, 
honestly adopted. 



NOTES MADE AT PRINCETON, TYRINGHAM, AND GRAY 
GABLES, 1899. 

" Some people, he said, said to him that if he had re- 
mained President, there would have been no war with Spain. 
He thought this was not quite fair, as we did not know just 
what had gone on below the surface. He deprecated the 
war, though, and especially the Philippine fighting. 

" With regard to the civil service, politicians used to 
come to him after he was elected and urge him to disre- 
gard the pledges of the party and his own personal pledges 
in this regard. He would say to them : ' There it is in 
the platform, and I have given my word. I would no more 
lie to an American public than to you.' 



Mr. Cleveland and the Civil Service 35 

" He added : ' If a President yields to the demands of 
the spoilsmen, he can never satisfy them. As between 
satisfying them and seeing this great Government well ad- 
ministered, there ought to be no choice — and civil-service 
reform above all things is a relief to the Executive and a 
good thing in itself.' 

"In making his final extensions, he was, he said, guided, 
by the opinion of those who were administering details. 
If any of them recommended extensions with a view of 
protecting incumbents, they forgot how freely removals 
could be made." 



THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 
By William E. Smythe 

The material greatness of the United States is the fruit 
of a pohcy of peaceful conquest over the resources of a 
virgin continent. The first movement of population sub- 
jugated the Atlantic seaboard to the uses of modern life. 
The next carried civilization across the Alleghanies, and ex- 
panded northward to the lakes, and southward to the gulf. 
The third peopled the Mississippi basin, largely with the 
veterans of the war for the Union. These three eras were 
intelligible and eventful. They made virtually complete the 
conquest and occupation of eastern America, and in eastern 
America more than ninety per cent, of a nation of seventy 
million people dwell to-day (1895). The lust for sudden 
riches, the opportunity for the development of a few sea- 
ports, the necessity for at least a sparse agricultural popu- 
lation to feed the mines and towns, have attracted a few 
millions into the Far West. But speaking in broad terms, 
and with a view to its ultimate capabilities, the conquest of 
the continent is only half accomplished. Beyond the line 
where the armies of civilization have bivouacked, if not 
laid down their arms, sleeps an empire incomparably greater 
and more resourceful than the empire those armies have 
conquered. Here lie the possibilities of a twentieth-century 
civilization — a civilization new, distinctive, and more 
luminous and potential than any which has preceded it in 
the world's long history. 

36 



Conquest of Arid America 



37 




Between the desert and the sown. 



The one-hundredth meridian divides the United States 
almost exactly into halves. East of that line dwell sixty- 
four million people. Here are overgrown cities and over- 
crowded industries. Here is surplus capital, as idle and 
burdensome as the surplus population. West of that line 
dwell four or five millions. Here is a great want both of 
people and of capital for development. Here is the raw 
material for another war of conquest, offering prizes far 
greater than those of the past, because natural resources are 
richer, and much more varied and extensive. The new em- 
pire includes, in whole or in part, seventeen States and Ter- 
ritories. It is a region of imperial dimensions. From 
north to south it measures as far as from Montreal to 
Mobile. From east to west the distance is greater than 
from Boston to Omaha. Within these wide boundaries 
'there are g-reat diversities of climate and soil, of altitude 



38 The Progress of a United People 

and other physical conditions. But everywhere the climate 
is healthful to an extraordinary degree, and in all, except 
the great plains region of the extreme east, the scenery 
is rugged and noble beyond description. 

The one-hundredth meridian is not merely the boundary 
line of present development. It is much more significant 
as indicating the beginning of the condition of aridity. To 
the popular mind *' arid " means only " rainless," and 
" rainless " is synonymous Avith " worthless." But 
" aridity," when properly defined and fully comprehended, 
is seen to be the germ of new industrial and social systems, 
with far-reaching possibilities in the fields of ethics and 
politics. It would be idle to attempt to predict how the 
American character will be modified and transformed when 




Artesian well in Yakima Valley. 



Conquest of Arid America 39 

millions of people shall have finally made their homes in the 
arid regions, under conditions as yet untried by Anglo- 
Saxon men. But that millions will live under these con- 
ditions is inevitable, and that the new environment will 
produce momentous changes in methods of life and habits 
of thought is equally certain. This sounds now like mere 
assertion. But the truth will be revealed by a study of a 
few representative colonial undertakings on arid lands dur- 
ing the last fifty years, by a brief statement of the larger 
problems involved in the conquest of Arid America, and 
by a reference to the experience of foreign peoples, ancient 
as well as modern, with similar conditions. 

So far as can be learned, Brigham Young had no pre- 
vious knowledge of irrigation when he entered Salt Lake 
valley. He quickly realized that he had come to an arid 
country, which would be hopeless for agriculture unless 
artificially watered. With marvelous perception, he saw 
that irrigation was not a drawback, but an advantage of 
the most important sort. He realized that it meant free- 
dom alike from the dangers of the drought and of the flood. 
He discovered that, having a rich soil and ample sunshine, 
and adding moisture by the construction of ditches, it was 
actually an improvement upon nature to be able to turn the 
" rain " either on or off with equal facility. And there- 
fore he rightly concluded that he had found in these con- 
ditions the basis of the most certain worldly prosperity, 
and the most scientific agriculture. It remained for a 
later genius to remark : " Irrigation is not a substitute for 
rain. Rain is a substitute for irrigation — and a mighty 
poor one." But if the Mormon leader did not say so, he 
evidently felt it. He perceived, furthermore, that irriga- 
tion was much more than an insurance policy upon the 



40 The Progress of a United People 

crops. It brought all the processes of agriculture within 
the realm of known facts, and that is science. It even ren- 
dered possible the control of the size of vegetables, and this 
became important many years afterward, w^hen the Mor- 
mon people added a great sugar-factory to their industrial 
system; for it is important to grow sugar-beets of about a 
standard size to get the best results. Moisture is required 
to give the beet a vigorous growth at the beginning; but 
when it is well started, weeks of uninterrupted sunshine 
are desirable in order to develop the saccharine qualities. 
Much sunshine at the wrong time dries up the crop, while 
much moisture at the wrong time produces a beet pleasing 
to look upon, but unprofitable at the factory. 




Typical home in farm village. 

Brigham Young also realized, almost at the first, that the 
necessity of careful irrigation largely increased the labor 
upon an acre of land; but he found that this labor was 



Conquest of Arid America 41 

generously rewarded by the increased yield both in quantity 
and quality. And from this fact he drew the most im- 
portant principle of his commonwealth, which was the 
division of land into small holdings. Closely related to 
this is the other twin factor in Mormon prosperity — the 
diversification of farm products to the last degree. 

Next in importance to the Utah development is the story 
of the Union Colony at Greeley, Colorado. The under- 
taking had the cordial support of Horace Greeley, in whose 
honor it was named. The first call for this colony was 
Dublished in the New York Tribune in December, 1869. 
It outlined a scheme of cooperation, although it was pro- 
posed to have individual landholdings. The advantages of 
irrigation, of the farm-village system, and of the inde- 
pendence of agricultural life w^ere attractively set forth. 
Fully one thousand people made application within a week 
for membership in the colony, and the first meeting was so 
largely attended as to make it necessary to adjourn from 
the Tribune office to a room in Cooper Institute. Horace 
Greeley presided, and, although that was twenty-five years 
ago, complained in his speech that " New York is filled 
with people, yet there are thousands who want to come 
hither. I do not know that emigration is the best remedy, 
but I think so." He described the history of London- 
derry Colony in New Hampshire, founded by his ancestors, 
and entered upon a most interesting discussion of the pro- 
posed colony in Colorado. Among other things he said : 

I believe that there ought to be not only one, but one thousand 
colonies. Still, I would advise no one who is doing well to leave 
his business and go West, unless he is sure of bettering his con- 
dition. But there are many men working for wages who ought 
I dislike to see men in advanced life working for 



42 The Progress of a United People 

salaries in places where, perhaps, they are ordered about by boyi 
I would like to see them working for themselves. 



If Greeley could come back and speak to-day upon existing 
conditions in the United States, he could say nothing more 
appropriate to the times. 

The Greeley Colony was composed of the best elements 
of Eastern citizenship. They made some serious miscal- 
culations. For instance, they estimated the cost of their 
canals at twenty thousand dollars, while the actual cost was 
more than twenty times as great. Fruit culture was men- 
tioned in the prospectus as certain to be an important in- 
dusti*y, but the soil and climate proved unsuitable. The 
dream of an improved household economy, based on a 
plan for cooperative bakeries and laundries, also proved 
delusive. There were other disappointments; but the fun- 
damental claims of irrigation were all vindicated at Greeley, 
as they have been whenever and wherever brought fairly to 
the test. 

A few years of intelligent labor brought a high degree 
of average prosperity, based upon substantial foundations. 
Even the severe panic of the summer of 1893 ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^'^~ 
terially disturb these foundations. During those trying 
weeks, when mines and smelters shut down, and banks and 
stores closed their doors, water, soil, and sunshine con- 
tinued to do their perfect work in the Union Colony. 
Greeley seemed like an oasis of prosperity in a desert of 
despair. The farmers received as the reward of the sum- 
mer's labor more than a million dollars in cash for the 
single item of potatoes. 

Probably the public is more familiar with the orange- 
colonies of southern California than with any other insti- 



Conquest of Arid America 



43 



tutions in the arid West. The story of these colonies is 
very interesting, but it possesses less value to the American 
people than the experience of Colorado and Utah, because 
southern California is semi-tropical, and therefore not 




y 



Stone aqueduct watering fields and orchards : A typical scene in 
southern California. 



44 The Progress of a United People 

fairly representative of average possibilities. In southern 
California institutions are almost ideal because of the 
peculiar climatic conditions. These beautiful valleys, nar- 
rowly restricted, but well-nigh perfect within their limita- 
tions, constitute the private box in the theater of Arid 
America; but the vast majority of people must always sit 
in the parquet and gallery. It would be utterly unfair and 
untrue, for this reason, to build hopes of average develop- 
ment upon the experience of this small but charming corner 
of the Western empire; but it teaches some lessons that may 
be generally applied. 

Southern California furnishes an extreme illustration of 
the value of water in an arid country. Land assessed at 
seventy-five cents per acre w^ithout water, being useful only 
for the pasturage of sheep, when brought under irrigation 
sells in the raw state for $ioo per acre and upward, with 
an extra price for water-right. Improved with orange- 
groves at the stage of maturity, it ranges in selling value 
from $500 to $2000 per acre, and has sometimes paid fifty 
per cent, interest per annum on the latter figure. Perhaps 
the most perfect type of these communities is Riverside, 
founded less than twenty-five years ago by Eastern colonists 
of the same class as the settlers of Greeley. Here land- 
ownings are divided into five- and ten-acre lots, and the 
homes are a long succession of beautiful country villas, 
surrounded by lawns, trees, and glowing flower-beds. 
Magnolia Avenue, a boulevard bordered for eighteen miles 
with double rows of palms, and intersected in the middle 
by a third row, is lined throughout its entire length by homes 
of this kind. 

It is impossible to attempt at this time even a meager 
outline of the physical basis of Arid America. It can only 



Conquest of Arid America 45 

be said that this neglected and often derided half of the 
continent is full of the potentialities of greatness. If the 
traveler would leave the main line at Maricopa, the train 




Sweetwater Dam, California. 

would carry him in an hour into the heart of the real 
Arizona. Here he would behold the miracle of irrigation. 
The Salt River valley has felt the touch of living water, and 
its deserts have been transformed into green pastures, 
gardens, and orchards. The productiveness of the gray 
soil when watered surpasses description. Phoenix, the 
capital, is surrounded by tens of thousands of acres of ir- 
rigated land; and here the flag of civilization has been 
planted in the heart of the primeval desert. Ten acres of 
this soil will bring a higher reward to labor than one hun- 
dred acres cultivated under the old conditions in the Eastern 
States. The possibilities of derided Arizona beggar the 



46 The Progress of a United People 

imagination. The day will come when the proudest State 
will not blush to stand under the same flag with the Terri- 
tory which sheltered the ancient civilization of the Aztecs. 

THE OUTLOOK : 

[A prophecy fulfilled.] 

The work of reclamation has been going forward silently, 
but gradually and surely, for the better part of a genera- 



, ..JW*^^IP%'<« 



r 




The desert before and after irrigation. 



Conquest of Arid America 47 

tion. Between ten and twenty millions of acres are now 
(1895) under ditch, and some slight rivulets of population 
have begun to trickle in upon the lands. But the threshold 
is scarcely passed. The arid region as a whole comprises 
more than 800,000,000 acres. Of this empire more than 
half a billion acres is still the property of the Government. 
It is the priceless heritage of the children of America. The 
work of scientific discovery of water-supply has not yet 
gone far enough to furnish a reasonable basis for an esti- 
mate of the amount of this land open to ultimate reclama- 
tion. But no one disputes that the entire present popula- 
tion of the United States could be accommodated in the arid 
region. If the present greatness of the American people 
is in any large degree the fruit of continental conquest, 
then the restoration of the national prosperity may cer- 
tainly be sought by a renewal of the policy of national 
development. Inconceivable sums of money and incalcula- 
ble human energy will be required to overcome the natural 
difficulties of the situation ; but man thrives on struggle, and 
waxes great on conquest. The time seems ripe for the 
advance. But if this is to be longer delayed, there are 
certain things which the nation ought to do, and which en- 
lightened statesmanship ought not to postpone. 

The arid region is full of great and peculiar problems 
which require to be studied from a national standpoint. 
Water is the foundation of all. The forests are nature's 
storage reservoirs. They are being constantly destroyed 
I:)y fire and avarice. The forest reservations made by the 
last and the present administrations are wise steps, but they 
cannot be effective unless accompanied by some compre- 
hensive system of patrol. If public sentiment would rally 
to the support of this demand for an enlightened policy of 



48 The Progress of a United People 

forest preservation, there is no doubt that legislation could 
be obtained at an early day. And if public opinion realized 
the vast interest at stake, it could not and would not hesitate. 
The most valuable irrigable lands are being steadily ac- 
quired for speculative purposes, under laws inadequate, if 
not infamous, in an arid country. The pasturage lands are 
the prize of lawless elements who fight and shed blood in 
the struggle for possession. The interstate streams are 
becoming entangled in rival appropriations, and developing 
a state of affairs that in any country but this would 
involve civil war. International questions have already 
arisen over waters common to the United States and to 
Mexico, and are certain to arise in the future with Canada. 
Here is a class of large problems which will call for the 




Winter flood in Salt River, Arizona, showing loss of water which should 
be stored in mountams. 



Conquest of Arid America 



49 




i^:iSif -'5i«*5'»-j" 



Irrigating a young orchard by the furrow method, Arizona. 



highest statesmanship, and which already merit careful pre- 
liminary study and investigation. And beyond these lies 
the great practical question as to the manner of reclaiming 
the lands. This involves many nice questions between the 
nation and the States, and between the States and private 
companies and individuals. 

But nothing can he hoped for until the American people 
have had their eyes opened to the importance of the stu- 
pendous national asset comprehended in Arid America. It 
is civilization that pleads for progress. It is humanity that 
cries aloud for more room in which to build its habitations. 
To say that the national valuation will be enhanced by un- 
told millions is merely to mention a sordid fact. But to 
say that the voiceless desert will blossom with the homes 
of men, and that these homes will rest upon social and in- 
dustrial systems better and purer than any the past has 

4 



50 The Progress of a United People 

known, and that the future population will be ruled under 
a nobler code of ethics — these are considerations that can- 
not appeal in vain to the American spirit. The new cen- 
tury will invite us to a new task of transcendent possibilities 
to the human race. 




An irrigation canal through the desert in Arizona. 



ON CONSERVATION 
By Theodore Roosevelt 

{From the message communicated to the Fifty-seventh Congress, 
November, ipo^.) 




Wise forest protection does not r 
mean the withdrawal of forest 
resources, whether of wood, water, 
or grass, from contrihuting their 
full share to the welfare of the 
people, but, on the contrary, gives 
the assurance of larger and more 
certain supplies. The fundamental 
idea of forestry is the perpetuation 
of the forest by use. Forest pro- 
tection is not an end of itself; it is 
a means to increase and sustain the 
resources of our country and the 
industries which depend upon them, 
our forests is an imperati\'e business necessity. We have 
come to see clearly that whatever destroys the forest, except 
to make way for agriculture, threatens our well-being. 

The practical usefulness of the national forest reserves 
to the mining, grazing, irrigation and other interests of the 
regions in which the reserves lie, has led to a widespread 
demand by the people of the West for their protection and 
extension. The forest reserves will inevitably be of still 

51 



Copyright, 1904, by Pach Bros. 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

The preservation of 



52 The Progress of a United People 

greater use in the future than in the past. Additions 
should be made to them whenever practicable, and their 
usefulness should be increased by a thoroughly business- 
like management. 

The wise administration of the forest reserves will be 
not less helpful to the interests which depend on water than 
to those which depend on wood and grass. The water 
supply itself depends upon the forest. In the arid region 
it is water,, not land, which measures production. The 
western half of the United States would sustain a popula- 
tion greater than that of our whole country to-day if the 
w^aters that now run to waste w^re saved and used for irri- 
o-ation. The forest and water problems are perhaps the 
most vital internal questions of the United States. 

In cases where natural conditions have been restored for 
a few years, vegetation has again carpeted the ground, 
birds and deer are coming back, and hundreds of persons, 
especially from the immediate neighborhood, come each 
summer to enjoy the privilege of camping. The forest 
reserves should be set apart forever for the use and benefit 
of our people as a whole and not sacrificed to the short- 
sighted greed of a few. 

The forests are natural reservoirs. By restraining the 
streams in flood and replenishing them in drought they 
make possible the use of water, otherwise wasted. Forest 
conservation is, therefore, an essential condition of water 
conservation. 

The forests alone cannot, however, fully regulate and 
conserve the waters of the arid region. Great storage 
works are necessary to equalize the flow of streams and to 
save the flood waters. Their construction has been con- 
clusively shown to be an undertaking too vast for private 



On Conservation ^3 

effort. It is properly a national function, at least, in some 
of its features. The storing of the floods in reservoirs at 
the headwaters of our rivers is but an enlargement of our 
present policy of river control. 

The reclamation of the unsettled arid public lands pre- 
sents a different problem. Here it is not enough to regu- 
late the flow of streams. The object of the government 
is to dispose of the land to settlers who will build homes 
upon it. To accomplish this object water must be brought 
within their reach. 

The reclamation and settlement of the arid lands will 
enrich every portion of the country, just as the settlement 
of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys brought prosperity to 
the Atlantic States. Our people as a whole will profit, for 
successful home-making is but another name for the up- 
building of the Nation. 




-.^^«r*^^-- 



X^' 



INDIAN WARFARE 
By G. W. Baird. Major, U. S. A. 

General Sherman has called the twenty years of constant 
Indian warfare following the war of the Rebellion, '' The 
Battle of Civilization." That battle, on this continent, of 
course, began earlier, but certain facts made that period 
an epoch by itself. A chief fact to be noted is that the 




m^ 



.. «i^ 



--^ 



^O-' 



Indians shooting. 

Indians during that time were always well armed, often 
much better than the troops. At the battle of Bear Paw, 
for instance, the Indians used magazine rifles of the best 

54 



Indian Warfare 55 

patterns, while nearly fourteen years afterwards, the army 
still has to do without them. The field of " The Battle 
of Civilization " was the vast trans-Missouri region, and 
civilization did not, during that period, satisfy itself 
with a gradual advance of its line, as formerly, but 
became aggressive, pierced the Indian country with 
three trans-continental railways and so ultimately abolished 
the frontier. 

A very large portion of the army (including nearly all of 
the cavalry and infantry and a small portion of the artillery) 
was at one time or another occupied with the task and 
many heroic deeds were done, but the conspicuously suc- 
cessful leaders were few. 

Even prior to the inception of the movement, the scope 
of this Indian Territory Expedition, as it was called, dif- 
fered from some of the notable Indian campaigns in the 
particular that General Miles waged Indian warfare ac- 
cording to the well-known principles of the art of war, so 
far as applicable. In too many cases expeditions against 
Indians had been like dogs fastened by a chain; within the 
length of the chain irresistible, beyond it powerless. The 
chain was its wagon train and supplies. A command with 
thirty days' supplies could inflict a terrible blow if only it 
could within thirty days come up with the Indians, deliver 
its blow, and get back to more supplies — otherwise it re- 
peated the historic campaign : 

The King of France went up the hill, with twenty thousand men ; 
The King of France came down the hill, and ne'er went up again. 

Or if perchance it delivered its blow successfully, it could 
not, for lack of time, follow up its success and attain the 
only object of just war, which is peace. 



56 The Progress of a United People 



A CONFLICT WITH SITTING BULL. 

More than once, in derogation of laurels won in warfare 
against other Indians, it was said, " Wait till you meet the 
Sioux." 

Simultaneous with the arrival at Fort Leavenworth, 
Kansas, of the news of the Custer catastrophe on the Little 
Big Horn, Montana, came orders to General Miles and the 

5th Lifantry to pro- 
ceed to the scene of 
hostilities to form a 
subordinate part of 
the large command 
already there. The 
task assigned him 
was to build log 
huts for his troops 
and stores, bring 
forward the winter 
supplies, by wagon, 
from the mouth of the Yellowstone, and then the com- 
mand was expected to hibernate, protecting themselves from 
attack and holding the ground for a basis of campaign in 
the following year. Two cantonments were built, one at 
the mouth of the Tongue River, and the other on the left 
bank of the Yellowstone, nearly opposite the present city 
of Glendive, but there was no hibernating, for the disposi- 
tion of the commander did not favor it, and he was so iso- 
lated that action on his own judgment was necessary under 
the circumstances. Immediately on assuming command 
General Miles began, as in the Indian Territory Expedition, 
to plan for a systematic campaign. 




A wounded war-pony. 



Indian Warfare 57 

The hostiles belonged on the large reservations far to 
the south and southeast of the Yellowstone, and the Gen- 
eral took means of getting the earliest possible informa- 
tion of their absenting themselves therefrom. He became 
satisfied, early in October, that a very large number of the 
hostiles were in his vicinity, and this fact, added to a pro- 
longed delay in the expected arrival at the cantonment on 
Tongue River of a supply train coming up from the canton- 
ment at Glendive, induced him to march out with the 5th 
Infantry and proceed down on the left bank of the Yellow- 
stone. On the 1 8th of October he met the train under 
escort of a battalion of the 226. Infantry commanded by 
Lieutenant-Colonel E. S. Otis of that regiment. The train 
had been once obliged to return to Glendive by the strong 
force of Indians, its teamsters so demoralized that their 
places were filled by soldiers. When advancing the second 
time Otis received, October 16, the following note, left on 
a hilltop by an Indian runner: 

Yellowstone. 
I want to know what you are doing traveling on this road. 
You scare all the buffalo away. I want to hunt in this place. I 
want you to turn back from here. If you don't I will fight you 
again. I want you to leave what you have got here and turn 
back from here. 

-I am your friend, 

Sitting Bull. 

I mean all the rations you have got and some powder. Wish 
you would write as soon as you can. 

Otis sent a firm reply by a scout and proceeded with the 
train surrounded by the Indians, who, for a considerable 
time, kept up firing but gradually fell to the rear. When 



58 The Progress of a United People 

General Miles learned the situation from Colonel Otis he 
started after Sitting Bull and overtook him near the head 
of Cedar Creek, a northern affluent of the Yellowstone. 
Sitting Bull sent a flag of truce to General Miles desiring 
to communicate, and General Miles met him with Chief 
Gall and several others between the lines. Sitting Bull 
shrewdly wished for an '' old-fashioned peace " for the 
winter (when warfare is most difficult), with permission 
to hunt and trade for ammunition, on which conditions he 
agreed not to molest the troops. But General Miles's ob- 
ject was permanent peace and the security of the territory 
then and before dominated by the Sioux, and he told Sit- 
ting Bull plainly that peace could come only by absolute 
submission. When the interview closed the troops were 
moved with the intention of intercepting the Indians should 
they try to move northward, and on the 21st of October 
another similar interview between the lines occurred. 

The Indians undoubtedly intended to emulate the act of 
bad faith by which General Canby lost his life at the hands 
of the Modocs, April 11, 1873. Several of their younger 
warriors, with affected carelessness, gradually moved for- 
ward in position to surround the party under the flag of 
truce. General Miles, observing this, moved back a step or 
two and told Sitting Bull very forcibly that those men were 
too young for the council, and that the '' talk " would end 
just there unless they returned to their lines. One of them 
had slipped a carbine up under his buffalo robe. Another 
muttered to Sitting Bull, ''Why don't you talk strong?" 
and he replied, " When I say that, I am going to shoot him." 
Meantime the troops were held in readiness to attack, had 
any act of bad faith been attempted ; even the accidental dis- 
charge of a firearm would have precipitated an attack in 



Indian Warfare 59 

which all between the lines would have fallen. It became 
evident, at last, that only force could settle the question, and 
General Miles said to Sitting Bull, " I will either drive you 
out of this country or you will me. I will take no advan- 
tage of you under flag of truce and give you fifteen minutes 
to get back to your lines ; then, if my terms are not accepted, 
I will open fire." With an angry grunt the old Medicine 
Man turned and ran back to his lines; the whole country 
was alive with Indians, not less than a thousand warriors 
swarmed all about the command, which, in a slender line 
extended to protect front and flanks and rear, pushed 
vigorously forward and drove the Indians from the deep 
valleys at the source of Cedar Creek, compelling them to 
leave some of their dead on the field, which they never 
willingly do, and then pursued them so hotly for forty-two 
miles to the Yellowstone that they abandoned food, lodge 
poles, camp equipage, and ponies. 

On October 2.y, more than four hundred lodges, about 
two thousand Indians, surrendered to General Miles, and 
five chiefs were taken as hostages for the execution by the 
Indians of their terms of surrender, i. e., to go to their vari- 
ous agencies. Sitting Bull and his immediate following, 
his family and connections by marriage, broke away from 
the main body during the pursuit and escaped northward, 
where he was later joined by Gall and other chiefs with some 
followers. 

The estimated number of warriors in this engagement 
was one thousand. To General Miles and to the 5th In- 
fantry, three hundred and ninety-eight rifles, is due the 
honor of this important victory, which had far-reaching 
consequences. Not since the battle of Little Big Horn had 
the followers of Sitting Bull been attacked by the troops 



6o The Progress of a United People 

in offensive battle. This was the first of a series of engage- 
ments in which the command of General Miles, or some 
detachment therefrom, vigorously assumed the offensive, 
and here began the successful battles and combats which re- 
sulted in breaking the power of the dreaded Sioux and 
bringing security and prosperity to a vast territory which 
is now penetrated by railways, occupied by hardy and pros- 
perous settlers, dotted over with towns and cities, and al- 
ready so developed and so permeated by the influences of 
our civilization that, in the form of new States, or portions 
thereof, it augments the glory and dignity of the nation. 

Returning to the cantonment at Tongue River, General 
Miles organized a force — four hundred and thirty- four 
rifles — made up of the 5th and a portion of the 22d Infan- 
try and pushed northward in pursuit of Sitting Bull, but the 
trail was obliterated by snow near the Big Dry, the broad 
bed of that which at times becomes a southern affluent of 
the Missouri. A winter of great severity, even for that 
region, opened early, and the command suffered intensely 
but kept the field and scoured the country along the Missouri 
River above and below old Fort Peck. 

On December 7, a detachment of the command, — Com- 
panies G, H, and I, 5th Infantry — one hundred officers and 
men, commanded by First Lieutenant F. D. Baldwin, 5th 
Infantry, overtook Sitting Bull's camp, one hundred and 
ninety lodges, and drove it across the Missouri, and on the 
1 8th the same force surprised the camp near the head of 
Redwater, a southern affluent of the Missouri, and captured 
camp and contents with sixty animals, the Indians scattering 
out south of the Yellowstone. 

As Sitting Bull did not for a considerable time thereafter 
enter as a factor into the campaign, it will be permitted to 



Indian Warfare 6i 

anticipate for a little and describe his subsequent move- 
ments. With a small following he shortly after moved 
northward and camped on the left bank of the Missouri; 
thence, near the end of the winter, poor and with scarcely 
any ammunition, he and his scanty following sought refuge 
north of the international boundary. As a war was raging 
of which he was an important factor — not so much from 
military prowess as from his position as a " Medicine Man " 
and an extreme and inveterate savage Indian, wdiich made 
him the nucleus of all the disaffected and hostile Sioux — 
his band ought to have been either disarmed at the boun- 
dary or interned. General Miles made repeated and urgent 
appeals to the higher authorities that action to that end be 
taken, but unfortunately it was not taken. 

Sitting Bull's position and character, as before indicated, 
and the freedom for a considerable time accorded him and 
his followers, north of the line, induced a large number of 
the hostile and disaffected to steal away to him, and so the 
NorthwTst Territory of the Dominion became the ren- 
dezvous and supply camp of a threatening force. But for 
the time Sitting Bull was eliminated from the problem 
of conquering a peace, and the closing months of 1876 saw 
the beginning of the end of the great Sioux War. The in- 
tense cold of a Montana winter did not chill the ardor nor 
lessen the activity of Miles and his indomitable infantry, 
and the winter was to witness, on their part, almost inces- 
sant and markedly successful campaigning. 

Doubtless one of Sitting Bull's own race would call him 
an unbending patriot. '' The Great Spirit made me an 
Indian and did not make me an Agency Indian," he proudly 
asserted to General Miles under a flag of truce, in the fall 
of 1876, when backed up by a thousand braves. There are. 



62 The Progress of a United People 

however, but two goals for the Indians — civihzation or an- 
nihilation ; Sitting Bull has the latter, as doubtless he would 
have preferred. He was kihed December 15, 1890, by men 
of his own race who were enforcing against him the orders 
of the whites, whom he hated. Captain Fechet, of the 8th 
Cavalry, who brought a force to the support of the Agency 
police, took charge of the body, which was not mutilated 
nor scalped ; he had it carried to Fort Yates, North Dakota, 
where it was decently buried in a coffin. Whatever the 
opinion entertained as to Sitting Bull and his taking off, 
inasmuch as his influence tended always to embroil his fol- 
lowing with the dominant race his death will doubtless re- 
sult in benefit to his own people. 

For every Indian war there is a cause; too often that 
cause has been bad policy, bad faith, bad conduct, or blun- 
dering on the part of the whites. Given the fact of war, 
whatever the cause, the soldier must secure peace, even if 
he fights to win it. For the savage of to-day, as for civilized 
man not so many centuries ago, an enemy and his wife and 
children have no rights. The recognition of this fact would 
prevent much misconception as to the character of Indians. 
If I have not indicated sufficiently the friendly feeling 
which, in common with nearly all army men, I feel for the 
Indians, not only friendly feeling but admiration for many 
of their qualities, I cannot hope to do so in a brief para- 
graph. The American people, those who really wish and 
hope to save the Indians from extinction or degradation, 
must be prepared to use great patience and summon all their 
wisdom. Indians (the men) naturally look upon the arts 
of peace very much as the knights of the past ages did. 
War is their pastime; by it come glory, honor, leadership. 
It is unlikely that the place of the Indians as peaceful citi- 



Indian Warfare 



63 



zens will approach their place as warriors. ''Justice and 
judgment," the one to protect, the other justly to punish 
them, have been too greatly lacking. 







CUSTER'S LAST BATTLE 
By E. S. Godfrey, Captain yrn Cavalry 

Tuesday morning, June 27, we had reveille without the 
'' morning guns," enjoyed the pleasure of a square meal, 
and had our stock properly cared for. Our commanding 
officer seemed to think the Indians had some " trap " set 
for us, and required our men to hold themselves in readi- 
ness to occupy the pits at a moment's notice. Nothing 
seemed determined except to stay where we were. Not an 
Lidian was in sight, but a few ponies were seen grazing 
down in the valley. 

About 9.30 a. m. a cloud of dust was observed several 
miles down the river. The assembly was sounded, the 
horses were placed in a protected situation, and camp-kettles 
and canteens were filled with water. An hour of suspense 
followed ; but from the slow advance we concluded that they 
were our own troops. " But whose command is it? " We 
looked in vain for a gray-horse troop. It could not be 
Custer; it must then be Crook, for if it was Terry, Custer 
would be with him. Cheer after cheer was given for 
Crook. A white man, Harris, I think, soon came up with 
a note from General Terry, addressed to General Custer, 
dated June 26, stating that two of our Crow scouts had 
given information that our column had been whipped and 
nearly all had been killed ; that he did not believe their story, 
but was coming with medical assistance. The scout said 
that he could not get to our lines the night before, as the 

64 



Custer's Last Battle 65 

Indians were on the alert. Very soon after this Lieutenant 
Bradley, 7th Infantry, came into our Hues, and asked where 
I was. Greeting most cordially my old friend, I immedi- 
ately asked, ''Where is Custer?" He replied, ''I don't 
know, but I suppose he was killed, as we counted 197 dead 
bodies. I don't suppose any escaped." We were simply 
dumfounded. This was the first intimation we had of his 
fate. It was hard to realize; it did seem impossible. 

General Terry and staff, and officers of General Gibbon's 
column soon after approached, and their coming was greeted 
with prolonged, hearty cheers. The grave countenance of 
the general awed the men to silence. The officers assembled 
to meet their guests. There was scarcely a dry eye ; hardly 
a word was spoken, but quivering lips and hearty grasping 
of hands gave token of thankfulness for the relief and grief 
for the misfortune. 

On the morning of the 28th we left our intrenchments to 
bury the dead of Custer's command. The morning was 
bright, and from the high bluffs we had a clear view of 
Custer's battle-field. We saw a large number of objects 
that looked like white boulders scattered over the field. 
Glasses were brought into requisition, and it was announced 
that these objects were the dead bodies. Captain Weir ex- 
claimed, " Oh, how white they look ! " 

All the bodies, except a few, were stripped of their cloth- 
ing. According to my recollection nearly all were scalped 
or mutilated, but there was one notable exception, that 
of General Custer, whose face and expression were natural; 
he had been shot in the temple and in the left side. Many 
faces had a pained, almost terrified expression. It is said 
that " Rain-in-the-face," a Sioux warrior, has gloried that 
he had cut out and had eaten the heart and liver of one of 
5 



66 The Progress of a United People 

the officers. Other bodies were mutilated in a disgusting 
manner. The bodies of Dr. Lord and Lieutenants Porter, 
Harrington, and Sturgis were not found, at least not rec- 
ognized. The clothing of Porter and Sturgis was found in 
the village, and showed that they had been killed. We 
buried, according to my memoranda, 212 bodies. The 
killed of the entire command was 265, and of wounded we 
had 52. 

The question has been often asked, " What were the 
causes of Custer's defeat ? '' I should say : 

First. The overpowering numbers of the enemy and 
their unexpected cohesion. 

Second. Reno's panic rout from the valley. 

Third. The defective extraction of the empty cartridge- 
shells from the carbines. 

Of the first, I will say that we had nothing conclusive on 
which to base calculations of the numbers — and to this day 
it seems almost incredible that such great numbers of In- 
dians should have left the agencies, to combine against the 
troops, without information relating thereto having been 
communicated to the commanders of troops in the field, fur- 
ther than that heretofore mentioned. The second has been 
mentioned incidentally. The Indians say if Reno's posi- 
tion in the valley had been held, they would have been com- 
pelled to divide their strength for the different attacks, which 
would have caused confusion and apprehension, and pre- 
vented the concentration of every able-bodied warrior upon 
the battalion under Custer; that, at the time of the dis- 
covery of Custer's advance to attack, the chiefs gave orders 
for the village to move, to break up; that, at the time of 
Reno's retreat, this order was being carried out, but as soon 
as Reno's retreat was assured the order was counter- 



Custer's Last Battle 67 

manded, and the squaws were compelled to return with the 
pony herds; that the order would not have been counter- 
manded had Reno's forces remained fighting in the bottom. 
Custer's attack did not begin until after Reno had reached 
the bluffs. 

Of the third we can only judge by our own experience. 
When cartridges were dirty and corroded the ejectors did 
not always extract the empty shells from the chambers, and 
the men were compelled to use knives to get them out. 
When the shells were clean no great difficulty was ex- 
perienced. To what extent this was a factor in causing the 
disaster we have no means of knowing. 

A battle was unavoidable. Every man in Terry's and 
Custer's commands expected a battle; it was for that pur- 
pose, to punish the Indians, that the command was sent out, 
and ^v•ith that determination Custer made his preparations. 
Had Custer continued his march southward — that is, left 
the Indian trail — the Indians would have known of our 
movements on the 25th, and a battle would have been fought 
very near the same field on which Crook had been attacked 
and forced back only a week before; the Indians never 
would have remained in camp and allowed a concentration 
of the several columns to attack them. If they had escaped 
without punishment or battle Custer would undoubtedly 
have been blamed. 

COMMENTS BY GENERAL FRY ON THE CUSTER BATTLE. 

The Sioux War of 1876 originated in a request by the 
Indian Bureau that certain wild and recalcitrant bands of 
Indians should be compelled to settle down upon their res- 
ervations under the control of the Indian agent. Sitting 
Bull, on the Little Missouri in Dakota, and Crazy Horse, 



68 The Progress of a United People 

on Powder River, Wyoming, were practically the leaders 
of the hostile Indians who roamed over what General 
Sheridan called '' an almost totally unknown region, com- 
prising an area of almost 90,000 square miles." The hos- 
tile camps contained eight or ten separate bands, each hav- 
ing a chief of its own. 

Authority was exercised by a council of chiefs. No 
chief was endowed with supreme authority, but Sitting 
Bull was accepted as the leader of all his bands. From 
500 to 800 warriors was the most the military authorities 
thought the hostiles could muster. Sitting Bull's camp, as 
Custer found it, contained some 8,000 or 10,000 men, 
women, and children, and about 2,500 warriors, including 
boys, who were armed with bows and arrows. The men 
had good firearms, many of them Winchester rifles with 
a large supply of ammunition. 

War upon this savage force was authorized by the War 
Department, and was conducted under the direction of 
Lieutenant-General Sheridan in Chicago. Having marched 
leisurely from Fort Lincoln on the Missouri to the Rosebud 
on the Yellowstone, the men and horses were well seasoned 
but not worn, and Reno has stated that when the regiment 
moved out on the 22d of June '* the men and officers were 
cheerful," the " horses zvcre in best condition." After 
Custer " caught " the Indians, their " escape," against 
which he was warned in Terry's written instructions, could 
be prevented only by attack. The trouble was their strength 
was under-estimated. Terry reported July 2: "He (Cus- 
ter) expressed the utmost confidence he had all the force he 
could need, and I shared his confidence/' Believing, as he 
and Sheridan and Terry did, that he was strong enough for 
victory, if Custer had not attacked, and the Indians had 



Custer's Last Battle 



69 



moved away, as they did when Gibbon's column approached 
on the 26th, Custer would have been condemned, perhaps 
disgraced. With his six hundred troopers he could not 
herd the Indians, nor, in that vast, wild, and difficult region, 
with which they were familiar and of which we were 
ignorant, could he by going further to his left, " south," 
drive them against Gibbon's column. His fight was forced 
by the situation. Believing, as Custer and his superiors did, 
that his 600 troopers were opposed by only 500, or at most 
800 warriors, his attack shows neither desperation nor rash- 
ness. General Sherman said that when Custer found him- 
self in the presence of the Indians he could do nothing but 
attack. 





BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE SPANISH WAR 
By President William McKinley 

The first encounter of the war 
in point of date took place April 
27th, when a detachment of the 
blockading squadron made a recon- 
naissance in force at Matanzas, 
shelled the harbor forts, and de- 
molished several new w^orks in con- 
struction (1898). 

The next engagement was des- 
tined to mark a memorable epoch 
in maritime warfare. The Pacific 
William McKinley. tieet, under Commodore George 

Dewey, had lain for some weeks at Hong-Kong. Upon the 
colonial proclamation of neutrality being issued and the cus- 
tomary tw^enty-four hours' notice being given, it repaired to 
Mirs Bay, near Hong-Kong, whence it proceeded to the 
Philippine Islands under telegraphed orders to capture or 
destroy the formidable Spanish fleet then assembled at 
Manila. At daybreak on the ist of May the American 
force entered Alanila Bay and after a few hours' engage- 
ment effected the total destruction of the Spanish fleet, 
consisting of ten warships and a transport, besides captur- 
ing the naval station and forts at Cavite, thus annihilating 
the Spanish naval power in the Pacific Ocean and com- 
pletely controlling the Bay of Manila, with the ability to 

70 



Brief Account of the Spanish War 71 

take the city at will. Not a life was lost on our ships, 
the wounded only numbering seven, while not a vessel was 
materially injured. For this gallant achievement the Con- 
gress, upon my recommendation, fitly bestowed upon the 
actors preferment and substantial reward. . . . 

Following the comprehensive scheme of general attack, 
powerful forces were assembled at various points on our 
coast to invade Cuba and Porto Rico. Meanwhile naval 
demonstrations were made at several exposed points. On 
May nth the cruiser Wihnington and torpedo boat IVinslow 
w^ere unsuccessful in an attempt to silence the batteries at 
Cardenas, a gallant ensign. Worth Bagley, and four sea- 
men falling. These grievous fatalities were, strangely 
enough, among the very few which occurred during our 
naval operations in this extraordinary conflict. 

Meanwhile the Spanish naval preparations had been 
pushed with great vigor. A powerful squadron under Ad- 
miral Cervera, which had assembled at the Cape Verde 
Islands before the outbreak of hostilities, had crossed the 
ocean, and by its erratic movements in the Caribbean Sea 
delayed our military plans while baffling the pursuit of our 
fleets. For a time fears were felt lest the Oregon and 
Marietta, then nearing home after their long voyage from 
San Francisco of over 15,000 miles, might be surprised by 
Admiral Cervera's fleet, but their fortunate arrival dispelled 
these apprehensions and lent much needed reinforcement. 
Not until Admiral Cervera took refuge in the harbor of 
Santiago de Cuba, about May 19th, was it practicable to 
plan a systematic naval and military attack upon the Antil- 
lean possessions of Spain. 

Several demonstrations occurred on the coasts of Cuba 
and Porto Rico in preparation for the larger event. On 



72 The Progress of a United People 

May 13th the North Atlantic Squadron shelled San Juan de 
Porto Rico. On May 30th Commodore Schley's squadron 
bombarded the forts guarding the mouth of Santiago har- 
bor. Neither attack had any material result. It was evi- 
dent that well-ordered land operations were indispensable to 
achieve a decisive advantage. 

The next act in the war thrilled not alone the hearts of 
our countrymen but the world by its exceptional heroism. 
On the night of June 3d, Lieutenant Hobson, aided by 
seven devoted volunteers, blocked the narrow outlet from 
Santiago harbor by sinking the collier Mcrrimac in the 
channel, under a fierce fire from the shore batteries, escaping 
with their lives as by a miracle, but falling into the hands of 
the Spaniards. It is a most gratifying incident of the war 
that the bravery of this little band of heroes was cordially 
appreciated by the Spanish admiral, who sent a flag of truce 
to notify Admiral Sampson of their safety and to compli- 
ment them on their daring act. They were subsequently 
exchanged July 7th. 

By June 7th the cutting of the last Cuban cable isolated 
the Island. Thereafter the invasion was vigorously prose- 
cuted. On June loth, under a heavy protecting fire, a 
landing of 600 marines from the Oregon, Marhlchcad, and 
Yankee was effected in Guantanamo Bay, where it had 
been determined to establish a naval station. 

This important and essential port was taken from the 
enemy after severe fighting by the marines, who were 
the first organized force of the United States to land in 
Cuba. 

The position so won was held despite desperate attempts 
to dislodge our forces. By June i6th additional forces 
were landed and strongly intrenched. On June 22d the ad- 



Brief Account of the Spanish War 73 



„ 1 ■- ■ AH 








MEXICO ^"^ / ^^ (/ BAHAMA 


50 100 


200 


300 400 60^ 




Statute Miles 11 

II 


^/_v ex ISLANDS 
KeyWest.....,-r ^ 1 

Havana -^NS^^''^ ^'n" 


A T 


L A 


N T I C 











C E 


A 2f 


^-J ^r-^ ^ ^' '•'' '■■ ^ 


c=> 






- San Juan 












/= / 


^ >- «'" 


Ijaiti'v Santo^ 


-, ^ i^-,^.' 


-* JarfiaicaVv^ "--n> 


W) v- Domingo 




^ Kingston 








-^-.^^ ^ ^ A 








Hondhcas 






M.-N. WORKS 



The Spanish-American War in the West Indies. 

vance of the invading army under ]\Iajor-General Shafter 
landed at Daiquiri, about 15 miles east of Santiago. This 
was accomplished under great difficulties but with marvel- 
ous despatch. On June 23d the movement against Santi- 
ago was begun. On the 24th the first serious engagement 
took place, in which the First and Tenth Cavalry and the 
First United States Volunteer Cavalry, General Young's 
brigade of General Wheeler's division, participated, losing 
heavily. By nightfall, however, ground within 5 miles of 
Santiago was won. The advantage was steadily increased. 
On July ist a severe battle took place, our forces gaining the 
outworks of Santiago ; on the 2d El Caney and San Juan 
were taken after a desperate charge, and the investment of 
the city was completed. The Navy cooperated by shelling 
the town and the coast forts. 

On the day following this brilliant achievement of our 



74 The Progress of a United People 

land forces, the 3d of July, occurred the decisive naval com- 
bat of the war. The Spanish fleet, attempting to leave the 
harbor, was met by the American squadron under command 
of Commodore Sampson. In less than three hours all the 
Spanish ships were destroyed, the two topedo boats being 
sunk, and the Maria Teresa, AUnirante Oqucndo, Vizcaya, 




Winfield Scott Schley. William Thomas Sampson, 

and Cristobal Colon driven ashore. The Spanish admiral 
and over 1,300 men were taken prisoners, while the enemy's 
loss of life was deplorably large, some 600 perishing. On 
our side but one man was killed, on the Brooklyn, and one 
man seriously wounded. Although our ships were repeat- 
edly struck, not one was seriously injured. Where all so 
conspicuously distinguished themselves, from the com- 
manders to the gunners and the unnamed heroes in the 
boiler rooms, each and all contributing toward the achieve- 
ment of this astounding victory, for which neither ancient 
nor modern history affords a parallel in the completeness of 
the event and the marvelous disproportion of casualties, it 



Brief Account of the Spanish War 75 

would be invidious to single out any for especial honor. 
Deserved promotion has rewarded the more conspicuous 
actors — the nation's profoundest gratitude is due to all of 
these brave men w^ho by their skill and devotion in a few 
short hours crushed the sea power of Spain and wrought 
a triumph whose decisiveness and far-reaching consequences 
can scarcely be measured. Nor can we be unmindful of 
the achievements of our builders, mechanics, and artisans 
for their skill in the construction of our warships. 

With the catastrophe of Santiago Spain's effort upon the 
ocean virtually ceased. 

The capitulation of Santiago followed. The city was 
closely besieged by land, while the entrance of our ships 
into the harbor cut off all relief on that side. After a 
truce to allow of the removal of noncombatants protracted 
negotiations continued from July 3d until July 15th, when, 
under menace of immediate assault, the preliminaries of 
surrender were agreed upon. On the 17th General Shafter 
occupied the city. The capitulation embraced the entire 
eastern end of Cuba. . . . 

With the fall of Santiago the occupation of Porto Rico 
became the next strategic necessity. General Miles had 
previously been assigned to organize an expedition for that 
purpose. Fortunately he w^as already at Santiago, where 
he had arrived on the nth of July with reinforcements for 
General Shafter's army. 

With these troops, consisting of 3,415 infantry and 
artillery, two companies of engineers, and one company of 
the Signal Corps, General Aliles left Guantanamo on July 
2 1st, having nine transports convoyed by the fleet under Cap- 
tain Higginson with the Massachusetts (flagship), Dixie, 
Gloucester, Columbia, and Yale, the two latter carrying 



76 The Progress of a United People 



troops. The expedition landed at Guanica July 25th, which 
port was entered with little opposition. 

On July 27th he entered Ponce, one of the most impor- 
tant ports in the island, from which he thereafter directed 
operations for the capture of the island. 

With the exception of encounters with the enemy at 
Guayama, Hormigueros, Coamo, and Yauco, and an attack 
on a force landed at Cape San Juan, there w^as no serious 
resistance. The campaign was prosecuted with great vigor, 
and by the 12th of August much of the island was in our 
possession. 

The last scene of the war was enacted at Manila, its start- 
ing place. On August 15, after 
a brief assault upon the works 
by the land forces, in which the 
squadron assisted, the capital sur- 
rendered unconditionally. The 
casualties were comparatively 
few. By this the conquest of 
the Philippine Islands, virtually 
accomplished when the Spanish 
capacity for resistance was de- 
stroyed by Admiral Dewey's 
victory of the ist of May, was 
formally sealed. To General 
Merritt, his officers and men for 
their uncomplaining and devoted 
service and for their gallantry 
in action the nation is sincerely grateful. Their long 
voyage was made with singular success, and the soldierly 
conduct of the men, most of whom were without pre- 
vious experience in the military service, deserves un- 
measured praise. 




The Philippines. 



Brief Account of the Spanish War 77 

The total casualties in killed and wounded in the Army 
during the war with Spain were : Officers killed, 2;^ ; en- 
listed men killed, 257; total, 280; officers wounded, 113; 
enlisted men wounded, 1,464; total, 1,577. Of the Navy: 
Killed, 17; wounded, 67; died as result of wounds, i; in- 
valided from service, 6; total, 91. 




Morro Castle from the southwest. 



Mr. Hcjbs.iirs eel 



directly under the flag on the left. The flag on t!ie extreme right is at the 
eastern battery. 



THE OREGON'S GREAT VOYAGE 
By Lieutenant Edward W. Eberle, U. S. N. 

( See Frontispiece.) 

The battle-ship Oregon was hauHng out of dry-dock at 
the United States naval station on Puget Sound on the i6th 
of February, 1898, as we received the startling news of the 
destruction of the Maine in Havana harbor. It was a mat- 
ter of congratulation that, come what might, the Oregon 
was in excellent condition, that she had her bilge-keels com- 
pleted, and that she was ready to sail at high speed to any 
part of the globe. 

We were soon hurrying down the coast to San Francisco, 
where we received orders to prepare immediately for a long- 
cruise. Here Captain Charles E. Clark came on board and 
took command. Everybody was happy over the prospect 
of going either to Cuba or Manila, and our crew worked 
day and night taking on board sixteen hundred tons of coal, 
five hundred tons of ammunition, and . stores to last six 
months. In the early morning of March 19, 1898, after 
working all the previous night, the Oregon sailed proudly 
out of San Francisco, the harbor of her christening, on what 
proved to be the most renowned cruise in modern naval his- 
tory. The ship was deep in the water, displacing nearly 
twelve thousand tons; but she seemed to be animated with 
the same enthusiastic and eager spirit that filled the hearts 
of our men as she started on the four-thousand-mile run 
to her first port, Callao, Peru, at a good speed, which she 
steadily maintained for sixteen days. 



The Oregon s Great Voyage 79 

After clearing the headlands of San Francisco Bay, a 
course was set to the southward, and we had started on 
our long passage. 

In the early morning of the sixteenth day out, we 
anchored in the harbor of Callao, and found our coal-barges 
awaiting us, together with orders to leave port as soon as 
possible. We eagerly asked for war news, and found that 
there had been little change in the situation since our de- 
parture from San Francisco; our relations witH Spain were 
still much strained. In the hope and belief that we were 
to continue on around the Horn, our men began the dis- 
agreeable task of coaling ship with light hearts and merry 
songs. The coal simply poured on board day and night, 
and at the end of fifty hours we had taken in eleven hun- 
dred tons, which gave us seventeen hundred on board. 

The Peruvians were very friendly indeed ; but as wx 
had heard that members of the Spanish colony in Lima had 
made threats against the ship, we took means to prevent 
attack or surprise. All sentries and lookouts were doubled 
and supplied with ammunition; the steam-cutters were 
armed and sent out to patrol around the ship all night, with 
orders to stop any boat that should approach within five 
hundred yards of the ship, and to fire or ram if necessary. 
The search-lights and six-pounders were kept ready for in- 
stant use. Although war had not been declared, we were 
taking no chances. These precautions were taken in every 
subsequent port, and our arrival in Callao really marks the 
date when the ship was placed on a war footing. At 
Callao secret orders were received from Washington, and 
only the captain knew what our future movements were to 
be. While in port we received warning of the presence on 
the Atlantic coast of South America of the Spanish torpedo- 



8o The Progress of a United People 

gun-boat Tcmcrario, and the Peruvian papers were filled 
with reports of terrible things that she was expected to ac- 
complish in the Straits of Magellan. Although the Tenie- 
rario was the bugaboo of many future cable messages, and 
we were continually on the watch for her, she caused us 
little uneasiness, as we were prepared to give her a warm 
reception. 

On the morning of April 7, after fifty hours in Callao 
harbor, — fifty hours of continuous hard, hot work, — the 
Oi^egon set sail. 

The ship was now on an absolute war footing; no lights 
were carried, guns were kept loaded and search-lights ready 
for use, and the men slept at their battle-stations on deck 
and in the fighting-tops. We exercised frequently at 
subcaliber target practice with all the guns of the main and 
the secondary batteries, the Marietta throwing barrels and 
boxes overboard for us to fire at as w^e steamed along. 
During good weather the Marietta maintained a speed of 
ten knots, but head winds and seas often reduced her speed 
to seven or eight knots. After getting clear of Magellan 
Straits and well north in the Atlantic, we had successfully 
passed through the stormy region of our long trip — the 
region of heavy seas and severe gales, where European 
wiseacres had predicted disaster for our 11,000-ton battle- 
ship. Now, however, began other dangers, and a long- 
period of anxious days and sleepless nights for the dear 
ones at home ; but as our ship plowed her way north through 
the Atlantic, straining every nerve to reach Cuba in time 
for the war, our enthusiastic crew had little thought that 
the nation's eyes were upon us. At 4:30 a. m., April 30, 
we signaled the Marietta to follow us to Rio de Janeiro, 
and then we went ahead at a fifteen-knot gait in order to 



yw^w^ 





82 The Progress of a United People 



reach Rio in the afternoon, so that we could see what vessels 
were in port, cable to \\'ashington, select a secure an- 
chorage, and get coal alongside before dark. 

When we steamed into the beautiful bay of Rio at 4 p. m. 
on the last day of April, we found there the Nictheroy 
(purchased from Brazil by the United States and renamed 

the Buffalo). All 
hands were very 
anxious for news, 
and memorable were 
the cheers that greet- 




ed the news 


1 that war 


had been 


declared. 


In a few 


moments 


our band 


was on 


deck, and 


between 


the rounds 


of cheers 


the strains 


1 of the 



Boiler-room of the Oregon. 



'' Star-Spangled Ban- 
ner " and of '' Hail, 
Columbia " floated 
over to the Brazilian 
fleet and the crowds 
that lined the 
wharves. The crew 
uncovered and stood 



at attention during the playing of the national anthem, and 
then followed more cheers and the inspiring battle-cry, 
"Remember the Maine!'' a Avatchword often heard about 
the decks as the men turned to the coal-barges and worked 
as they had never worked before. The intense heat and the 
long and trying work-hours of those days and nights were 



The Oregon s Great Voyage 83 

borne without a murmur. In view of the warning despatches 
concerning the Temerario, we took every precaution against 
any treacherous manceuver in a friendly port. The Oregon 
steamed far up the bay, and took an unusual anchorage in 
mid-harbor, so that no vessel could have an excuse for ap- 
proaching us. Then we informed the Brazilian govern- 
ment and the Brazilian admiral that we expected them to 
prevent any hostile acts by Spanish vessels within neutral 
waters, and warned them that in self-protection we should 
sink any Spanish vessel that should attempt to approach 
within half a mile of our anchorage. The Brazilian gov- 
ernment proved very friendly indeed; and realizing the jus- 
tice of our demands, the admiral promised to prevent any 
Spanish vessel from entering the harbor at night, or from 
approaching our anchorage during the day. Our steam- 
cutters patrolled all night, the search-lights were in use, 
and the rapid-fire guns were always manned. The Marietta 
anchored as a picket-vessel in a position covering the harbor 
entrance. Her orders were: "If a suspicious-looking ves- 
sel is sighted entering the harbor, and if she answers to the 
description and to the picture furnished by the department, 
inform her that if she approaches the Oregon within half 
a mile she will be sunk. Blow siren; turn on search-light, 
and keep it on her all the time. If she is being escorted to 
an anchorage by a Brazilian man-of-war, turn on search- 
light and flash it several times to attract attention. The of- 
ficer of the deck will answer either signal by three blasts of 
the whistle, and immediately sound the call for general 
quarters." 

At night the Brazilian admiral sent a cruiser outside to 
patrol the harbor entrance, and with her search-lights and 
those on the forts it would have been impossible for a 



84 The Progress of a United People 

Spanish vessel to enter the port unseen. It was even nec- 
essary to place sentries over our coal-barges, as Spanish 
sympathizers with bombs in their possession had been ap- 
prehended near them. All the coal was carefully ex- 
amined as it came on board. The Spanish minister pro- 
tested against our taking coal and remaining in a neutral 
port longer than twenty- four hours, but the Brazilian 
government allowed us ample time for coaling and for 
making necessary repairs. 

On the afternoon of the second day of May came the 
news of Commodore Dewey's superb victory in Manila 
Bay. The scene that followed the publication of this news 
might be likened to an Indian war-dance. Our black, coal- 
begrimed men fairly went wild. They cheered ; they danced 
in the coal-barges and on the decks, and made the harbor 
ring; and then the coal came on board more rapidly than 
ever, while the band played patriotic airs. All afternoon 
and well into the night there was a combination of music, 
cheers, and shoveling coal. There were cheers for Com- 
modore Dewey, for the Asiatic Squadron, and for our cap- 
tain and officers. Our minister and the American colony 
came on board and joined in the love-feast. While the 
crew kept up their rejoicing, the captain and officers were 
secretly and carefully considering this important despatch 
from the Navy Department : '' Four Spanish armored 
cruisers, heavy and fast, three torpedo-boat destroyers, 
sailed April 29 from Cape de Verde to the west, destina- 
tion unknown. Beware of and study carefully the situa- 
tion. Must be left to your discretion entirely to avoid this 
fleet and to reach the United States by West Indies. You 
can go when and where you desire. Nicthcroy and the 
Marietta subject to the orders of yourself." 



The Oregon! s Great Voyage 85 

The Rio papers were filled with startling rumors about 
Admiral Cervera's fleet and the little Tcmerario, and each 
day reported the enemy's fleet awaiting us outside the har- 
bor. On May 3 the official despatch, " Inform the depart- 
ment of your plans. The Spanish fleet in Philippine Is- 
lands annihilated by our naval force on the Asiatic station," 
caused a repetition of the preceding day's enthusiasm. Our 
reply to the department was as follows: "The receipt of 
telegram of May 3 is acknowledged. Will proceed in 
obedience to orders I have received. Keeping near the 
Brazilian coast as the Navy Department considers the 
Spanish fleet from Cape de Verde Islands superior, will be 
unsuitable. I can coal from the N tether oy, if necessity 
compels it, to reach the United States. If the Nietheroy 
delays too much I shall hasten passage, leaving her with 
the Marietta. Every department of the Oregon in fine 
condition." 

Then, at seven o'clock in the morning of May 4, the 
Oregon and the Marietta steamed majestically out of the 
harbor of Rio. Many of the good people of Rio were con- 
fident that we were going to certain destruction, for the 
papers had led them to believe that Admiral Cervera was 
awaiting us outside, and the Brazilian admiral even sent a 
cruiser out ahead of us in order to prevent an engagement 
in neutral waters. 

At the request of the government of Brazil, we had 
agreed to sail twelve hours in advance of the Nietheroy. 
We steamed about fifty miles from Rio, and then back 
again to meet the Nietheroy. We lay off the harbor en- 
trance all night, steaming away before daylight in order to 
prevent detection ; but, to our dismay, the Nietheroy did 
not come out, and so we sent the Marietta back in the direc- 



86 The Progress of a United People 

tion of Rio to wait another twelve hours. After waiting 
thirty-six hours in all, we sighted the Nictheroy coming out 
with the Marietta; but as she could not make more than 
seven knots, the question arose whether we should remain 
with this slow vessel or continue northward at high speed. 
The Oregon would be an important addition to Admiral 
Sampson's fleet; the department had been urging us to 
make a quick passage ; the enemy's fleet was supposed to be 
seeking us, and we felt that we could make a better fight 
single-handed than if accompanied by slow vessels that 
would have to be protected. All these considerations were 
weighed, and our gallant captain decided to part company 
with the two vessels, and to proceed north at full speed. 
So in the middle of the night we signaled the Marietta: 
" Proceed with the Nictheroy to Bahia, and cable the de- 
partment," which message she answered with " Good-by 
and good luck." Then we went ahead full speed. 

The following day, when upon the high seas, all hands 
were called aft on the quarterdeck, and the captain read to 
the men a portion of the message, which told that the 
Spanish fleet was supposed to be in search of the Oregon. 
This was followed by a scene of great enthusiasm, five hun- 
dred men joining in an outburst of cheers for the Oregon, 
her captain, and her officers. Every preparation was made 
to meet the enemy's fleet. The ship was " cleared for ac- 
tion." All woodwork was torn out. Even the expensive 
mahogany pilot-house was reduced to a skeleton In order to 
prevent its being set on fire by Spanish shell. The ship was 
painted the dull gray war color, and the graceful white 
vessel that had steamed out of Rio harbor was transformed 
into an ugly lead-colored fighter. To lessen the danger of 
conflagration, preparations were made to throw overboard 



The Oregon s Great Voyage 87 

all our boats upon sighting the enemy's fleet. Everybody 
was eager for active duty at any odds. 

Before leaving Rio, our men had purchased a large sup- 
ply of red ribbon, of which they made cap-bands, bearing in 
letters cut out of brass the inspiring words, " Remember 
the Maine " ; and this legend the cap of every Oregon man 
bore throughout the war. 

We now steamed to the northward along the coast of 
Brazil, intending to touch at Bahia or Pernambuco to com- 
municate with the Navy Department. One forenoon was 
spent at target practice, all the guns being fired, and the 
shooting being excellent. 

On May 8, after dark, we anchored in the harbor of 
Bahia, and early next morning sent the following cable 
message to Washington : '' Much delayed by the Marietta 
and the Nictlieroy. Left them near Cape Frio, with orders 
to come home or beach, if necessity compels it, to avoid 
capture. The Oregon could steam fourteen knots for 
hours, and in a running fight might beat ofif and even cripple 
the Spanish fleet. With present amount of coal on board 
will be in good fighting trim, and could reach West Indies. 
If more should be taken here I could reach Key West; 
but, in that case, belt-armor, cellulose belt, and protect- 
ive deck would be below water-line. Whereabouts of 
Spanish fleet requested." \\'e made arrangements for 
coal, but in the evening this answer to the captain's 
message w'as received : " Proceed at once to West Indies 
without further stop Brazil. No authentic news the Spanish 
fleet. Avoid if possible. We believe that you will defeat 
it if met." And then in the middle of the night the ship 
went to sea, standing well off the coast in order to make a 
wide sweep around Cape St. Roque, where Admiral 



88 The Progress of a United People 

Cervera's fleet was supposed to be awaiting us. Captain 
Clark's plan of battle was as follows: Upon sighting the 
Spanish fleet, we were to sound to general quarters, go 
ahead full speed under forced draft, and head away from 
the enemy. The purpose of this manoeuver was to " string- 
out " the enemy's vessels in their chase after us. When 
their leading vessel should approach within close range, we 
were to turn on her and destroy her with our terrific broad- 
sides, and then devote our attention to the other vessels in 
succession. We were confident that not more than two of 
these vessels could equal our speed ; and by making a running 
fight we expected to eliminate the possibility of the enemy's 
surrounding us or either ramming or torpedoing the ship. 
How well this plan would have succeeded is clearly shown 
by the Oregon's work on July 3 ; for on that historic day 
this very manoeuver was, by chance, executed, with the 
difference that we chased and overtook, in turn, several of 
the enemy's vessels, instead of their chasing us. 

About eight o'clock in the evening of May 12, when off 
Cape St. Rocjue, w^e sighted a number of lights, which had 
the appearance of a fleet sailing in double column. Not a 
light was burning on the Oregon, and she passed right 
through the midst of the vessels undetected, for she could 
not have been seen a hundred yards away. What those 
lights were we have never been able to ascertain, but, ac- 
cording to the log of the Colon, the enemy's squadron was 
not Off Cape St. Roque at that time. 

We passed several sailing-vessels, among them the little 
sloop Spray, and in answer to our inquiries all stated that 
they had seen no Spanish ships. On May 15 the Oregon 
made her best run of three hundred and seventy-five miles, 
and at daylight on May 18 she came to anchor in the harbor 




Coaling. 



90 The Progress of a United People 

of Bridgetown, Barbados. Having been in two yellow- 
fever ports, the ship was placed in quarantine, although no 
one had been allowed on shore in those ports, and all on 
board were in good health. Her Majesty's officials were 




Announcement of the supposed proximity of Cervera's fleet. 



The Oregon s Great Voyage 91 

most friendly, and gave us a cordial welcome, but rigidly 
enforced the neutrality laws. The white inhabitants of 
Barbados were strongly American in their sentiments, and 
boat-loads of them pulled around the ship, cheering and 
wishing us success. 

We were allowed sufficient coal to reach a home port, 
but could remain only twenty- four hours; and neither of 
the belligerents was supposed to send or receive cable 
messages until twenty-four hours after our departure. As 
the American consul had managed to send a despatch to 
the State Department announcing our arrival before the 
government censor reached the cable office the Spanish 
consul was permitted to cable our arrival to his govern- 
ment. We here heard the rumor that a Spanish fleet of 
sixteen vessels was at Martinique, only ninety miles away, 
and that Spanish vessels had been seen cruising off Barbados 
the previous day. We seemed to have the enemy's vessels 
all around us, and none of our ships was near at hand. 
We began coaling as soon as possible, and to the anxious 
inquiries of a few shore people, supposed to be Spanish 
emissaries, we stated that we should probably sail next 
morning. But about nine o'clock that night we suddenly 
cast off the coal-barges and steamed out of the harbor. 
We kept all lights burning brightly, and set a course direct 
for Key West, so that the Spanish spies could see our lights 
and report to the Martinique fleet the direction in which we 
had sailed. But when we were five miles from the harbor 
we suddenly extinguished every light, turned about, made a 
sweep around Barbados, and laid a course well to the east- 
ward of all the islands, thus by a strategical move frustrating 
any night attack by the enemy's torpedo-boats and armored 
vessels which we believed to be at Martinique. We passed 



92 The Progress of a United People 

around to the northward of the Bahamas, and after dark 
on May 24 anchored off Jupiter Inlet, Florida, and sent the 
following despatch : "' Oregon arrived. Have coal enough 
to reach Dry Tortugas or Hampton Roads. Boat landed 
through surf awaits orders." As we learned afterward, 
the announcement of our safe arrival sent a thrill of joy 
and thanksgiving throughout the country. About two in 
the morning came this answer: " If ship is in good condi- 
tion and ready for service, go to Key West, otherwise to 
Hampton Roads. The department congratulates you upon 
your safe arrival, which has been announced to the Presi- 
dent." Our anchor was hove up in a hurry, and with light 
and happy hearts we were soon on our way to Key West to 
join Admiral Sampson's fleet in Cuban w^aters, ready for 
duty. We reached Key West on the morning of May 26, 
and anchored off Sand Key, having made the run of four- 
teen thousand miles in just sixty-eight days, having passed 
through two oceans and circumnavigated a continent, hav- 
ing endured most oppressive heat and incessant toil, having 
demonstrated to the skeptics of Europe that heavy battle- 
ships of the Oregon class can cruise with safety under all 
conditions of wind and sea, and at the end of this remark- 
able voyage having had the pleasure to report the ship in 
excellent condition and ready to meet the enemy. 

Our noble and beloved captain, who had so ably executed 
his trying task, received congratulatory messages from 
every part of the country, including this telegram from the 
Secretary of the Navy : " The department congratulates 
you, your officers and crew, upon the completion of your 
long and remarkably successful voyage." 



THE BATTLE OF MANILA BAY 

The naval battle of Manila Bay on May-day, 1898, will 
l^e ranked by historians of the American navy with Perry's 
victory on Lake Erie and Farragut's attack on the forts of 
Mobile Bay. Splendid as an example of American daring 
and skill on the part of Admiral Dewey, it is unique be- 
cause of the terrible loss inflicted on the Spanish, without 
the death or serious injury of a single man on the American 
fleet. Like the shot of the '* embattled farmers" of 1775, 
the roar of Admiral Dewey's guns at Manila has gone round 
the world, and has shown to the nations the efficiency of 
the American navy. 

The guns of the American fleet were heavier than those 
of the Spanish squadron, but the Spaniards, in addition, had 
several shore batteries with formidable guns. On the 
lunette in front of the city of Manila were several ten-inch 
Krupp guns, and on Cavite fortress, which guarded the 
harbor, were batteries of six- and eight-inch guns. 

The battle was fought mainly at a distance of from 
twenty-five hundred to thirty-five hundred yards, or, roughly, 
between a mile and a half and two miles. At this range ac- 
curate marksmanship was imperative. Even at the lesser 
distance the Spanish fire was ineffective. The simple 
truth is that the Spaniards had had no target practice, while 
on most of the American ships target-firing was a regular 
monthly duty. The absolute lack of skill of the Spanish 
gunners was demonstrated by their waste of ammunition 

93 



94 The Progress of a United People 

while the American fleet was drawn off for breakfast. 
They kept up a continual fire from the Cavite batteries, 
although their glasses should have shown them that all 
their shells fell short. At close quarters they were equally 
powerless to inflict damage, for both the Baltimore and the 
Olympia approached very near to Cavite in the second en- 
gagement, and succeeded in silencing the guns of the for- 
tress without suffering the loss of a man, and without 
material damage to either ship. And after this the little gun- 
boat Petrel dashed up and down close inshore, destroying 
the Spanish gunboats, and silencing the remaining shore 
batteries; and she also escaped unscathed. 

NARRATIVE OF COLONEL GEORGE A. LOUD. 

Who witnessed the battle from the revenue cutter Hugh McCiiUoch. 

In the gray dawn of the coming day we found ourselves 
in front of and about four miles distant from Manila. It 
was Sunday, May i, at about 5:15, that a puff of white 
smoke was seen on the Manila shore, and a shot struck the 
water a mile short of our ship; then from the opposite 
shore, at Cavite, seven miles distant from Manila, came 
heavy reports, and their shots also fell short of us. The 
McCiillocli, with the transports, stopped in the middle of 
the bay, not so far distant but that shots fell about us during 
the entire fight. Our fighting ships, without making reply to 
either attack, steamed rapidly up the bay, which terminates 
several miles beyond the city. After thus passing, they 
swung round toward the Cavite side, and steamed straight 
toward the forts and the Spanish ships which were anchored 
there, and which now added their rapid fire to that of the 
forts. 



The Battle of Manila Bay 95 

Cavite is the government arsenal and navel depot, and 
there the Spanish admiral had chosen his fighting-ground. 
As the flag-ship came on she opened fire at 5 135 with her 
forward eight-inch rifles, and, swinging round in front of 
the fort, sent in broadside after broadside from her rapid- 
fire five-inch guns of the port battery. Tlie other ships, in 
usual order, followed in and opened fire, and now the battle 
was fast and furious. Never, it seemed to us on the 
McCiilloch, did spectators watch a more desperate game; 
for from the continual rain of shot we saw poured into our 
ships it seemed certain that there would be heavy loss of life, 
and some of our ships probably crippled or sunk, before 
the fight was over. 

As we watched with breathless interest, we saw that our 
ships had passed and had turned a half-circle. Slowly back 
they went past the forts, now working their starboard bat- 
teries as rapidly as possible, the fire from tlie shore showing 
no signs of abatement. Again they wheeled and came 
down the line. We saw a large white ship move out to 
meet the Olympia. We suspected it was (and it afterward 
proved to be) the Spanish admiral's flag-ship, the Reina 
Christina. She was met by such a storm of shot, all 
the fleet which were in range joining in, that she could 
not reach the Olympia at close quarters, and, wheeling 
about, tried to make back for the little harbor at Cavite 
from which she came; but at the instant when her stern 
swung in line, one of the big eight-inch rifles in the for- 
ward turret of the Olympia hurled a 250-pound percussion 
shell, which, true to its aim, raked her from her stern for- 
ward, exploding her boiler, and completely wrecking the 
ship and setting her on fire. This shot, the Spanish sur- 
geons told us, killed the captain and sixty men ; and the 



96 The Progress of a United People 

entire loss on this ship in the admiral's desperate sally 
was one hundred and forty killed and more than two hun- 
dred wounded. 

The admiral changed his flag to another ship, the Isla de 
Cuba, but fared no better, being driven back and the ship 
sunk at the entrance of the little harbor. It was at this 
time that the Olympia had her moment of greatest peril. 
We could see two black boats, which turned out to be tor- 
pedo-launches, coolly awaiting her approach; and as the 
Olympia came on they started for her at full speed. Tlie 
Olmypias gunners realized the danger to their ship, but 
were not '' rattled " for an instant. Failing to hit the small 
targets with the large guns, as the launches rapidly ap- 
proached within eight hundred yards the secondary battery 
of rapid-fire six-pounders poured in their shells with such 
deadly efifect that the first launch blew up, one of our shots 
either exploding its boiler or the torpedo, for with our 
glasses we could see a huge column of water go up, and 
the boat instantly disappear, with all her crew. The second 
launch was riddled with shot, and was beached. It was 
afterward found by us with a dozen or more shot-holes 
through it, and all bespattered with blood. It was a brave 
effort on the part of the Spaniards, but American marks- 
manship checkmated their bold move. 

Back a fourth time, and then a fifth, went the fleet past 
the batteries and ships; and then, at 7:45, we saw the 
Olympia heading towards us instead of starting for her 
sixth time down the line. What did it mean ? It looked to 
us until the last half-hour as though we had stirred up a 
hornet's nest and our fleet had met its match. Why were 
they coming out of the fight? Was it because they had 
been disabled or badly injured, or had the loss of life been 



The Battle of Manila Bay 97 

such that we were repulsed? What could it mean? It 
was a quarter of an hour of terrible anxiety and suspense to 
us all, until the Olympia neared us. No signs of serious 
damage could we see, and as our crew gave them three 
hearty cheers, they came back to us with such a happy ring 
that it boded well. 

All commanders were summoned on board the flag-ship, 
and our anxiety was relieved, on Captain Hodgsdon's re- 
turn, by the happy new^s that not a man had been killed, and 
on the Baltiuiovc only six slightly wounded; and not a shot 
had done our ships serious damage. We learned that the 
ships had come out only to give our men a little much-needed 
rest, and breakfast, of which they also stood greatly in need. 
The sun had come up in a cloudless sky, the air perfectly 
calm, and the heat of this tropical climate, with the stifling 
powder-smoke (which much of the time settled around the 
ships in a dense cloud), made it imperative that the men 
have a few moments' rest in purer air. 

While the interval or cessation of battle, as we now 
know, was from no serious cause, the Spaniards thought, 
as w^e afterward learned, that we had retired to bury our 
dead, and, in fact, that they had repulsed us. They w^re, 
however, quickly undeceived. At 10:45 ^^^^ Baltimore was 
ordered to go at her highest speed in front of the forts. 
Slie disappeared in a dense cloud of smoke from her two 
huge funnels, and shortly after we could hear the quick, 
ringing reports from her six- and eight-inch guns, and the 
battle was on again. The forts bravely replied at first, 
but soon their fire slackened. For two hours past we had 
seen several ships burning fiercely, and it was now plain that 
their naval force was out of the fight. 

The Olympia, after an interval of twenty minutes, fol- 
7 



98 The Progress of a United People 

lowed the Baltimore, pushing the latter on, and the other 
ships, following each in turn, stopped or slowed down in 
front of the Cavite forts, and rained their broadsides into 
them. Two of our ships, now that resistance had weak- 
ened, lay idle in the bay beyond the forts wdiile the other 
four were pressing the fight to a finish. With our glasses 
we watched as shot after shot struck the huge sand em- 
bankment, bursting, and sending clouds of sand a hundred 
feet in the air. The fighting plan was now different from 
the morning work. The ships moved into proper distance, 
stopped, got accurate range, and then, with deliberation, 
sent in shot after shot, with the obvious determination that 
every shot should count. 

The saucy little Petrel, with her main battery of four six- 
inch guns, being of light draft, steamed in nearer than any 
of the rest, and coolly banged away as though she were an 
armored battle-ship. Quiet Captain Wood won the admira- 
tion of the whole fleet, and the Petrel was on the spot re- 
christened the Bahy Battle-ship. At 12:45 the Spanish 
flag was still flying, and the Petrel, Boston, and Raleigh 
were at the front, the other three resting. At i 105 p. m. 
the three ships at the front rattled in a continuous fire, which 
finished the fight and the Petrel signaled that the enemy had 
" struck," or hauled down their flag. 

We cannot fail, however, to give justice to our enemy, 
for all agreed that the Spaniard is a tough fighter, even 
if he cannot shoot straight. It was a most astounding re- 
sult of four to five hours' shooting, partly from the finest 
Krupp rifled cannon, that no harm worthy of mention was 
done to our ships, and only six men were slightly wounded 
on the Baltimore from flying splinters. There was no ex- 



The Battle of Manila Bay 99 

cuse for such bad marksmanship, as we gave them the full 
broadsides of our ships at short range for targets. 

The conduct of our men in this their first fight was 
beyond praise. Not a man flinched, but each remained at 
his post, doing his duty coolly and well. As to the loss of 
the enemy, it is impossible to learn with accuracy, for the 
dead on the burning Spanish ships were not removed, but 
were burned with them. From what can be learned from 
the Spanish surgeons, there were upward of eight hundred 
killed, and double that number wounded. The McCulloch 
having anchored in Cavite harbor on the day after the fight, 
we saw hospital-flags, the Geneva cross of red in a white 
field, flying over the cathedral, the hospital, and another 
large building. The writer was with Lieutenant Hodges, 
who had command of the side-wheel steamer Isabella I, one 
of our prizes, when on Tuesday afternoon he started to 
convey the wounded from Cavite across to Manila. On the 
one trip made that afternoon two hundred and one were 
taken over, which did not comprise one half the number to 
be transferred. We were not allowed to enter the river 
Pasig at Manila with these wounded, but steam-launches 
came out and transferred them from our 1)oat to the shore. 

NARRATIVE OF DR. CHARLES P. KINDLEBERGER, JUNIOR SUR- 
GEON OF THE FLAG-SHIP " OLYMPIA. " 

When seven miles away puffs of smoke and roar of guns 
showed that the forts had begun their fire on us. But the 
shells did not reach, and the fleet sailed on without reply. 
Still silent, the Olympia drew near until she was only forty- 
four hundred yards away from fort and fleet. Then the 
roar of one of her forward eight-inch guns was the signal 



100 The Progress of a United People 

that the fight had opened. Ahnost instantly — it seemed 
to me Hke an echo — • came the sound of the guns of the 
other ships. First would come the flash, then the puff of 
smoke, and then the mighty roar. We fired our port bat- 
teries in turn, and then, swinging round, discharged the 
starboard guns. 

During this fight and the one later I watched the spec- 
tacle from the six-pounder guns forward of the sick-bay. 
There was very little for me to do, and as these guns were 
fired only when the ship was at short range from the shore, 
my position was an ideal one. Early in the fight I saw what 
looked like a ten-inch shell coming toward the ship with 
frightful velocity. It seemed inevitable that we should be 
destroyed. The shell struck the water ten feet from the 
bow and ricochetted clear over the vessel, with a screech 
that was indescribable. Had it struck five feet higher I 
should not tell this tale. Other shells fell as near, and the 
impact sent the water splashing over us. 

Soon after two torpedo-boats put out from the fleet. 
They came straight for the Olympia, w^ith the manifest pur- 
pose of sinking the flag-ship. When the foremost boat 
reached close range a perfect storm of steel burst upon it. 
The surface of the ocean burst into foam under the hail of 
shot, and the doomed boat went down with all her crew. 
The other, seeing -the fate of her companion, turned and 
made for the shore. With riddled sides she managed to 
float until the few surviving members of her crew escaped. 
As we neared Cavite a mine field exploded, but as we were 
fully a thousand yards off, the ship was not hurt. 

Five times the fleet ranged up and down before Cavite, 
each vessel pouring in broadsides upon the Spanish fleet 
and the batteries of Cavite. As soon as the Spanish ad- 



The Battle of Manila Bay loi 

miral could get up steam on his flag-ship, the Reina Chris- 
tina, he came boldly out to give us battle. It was magnificent, 
but in his case it certainly was not war, for his flag- 
ship was hit again and again and his men were driven from 
their guns by the fierce fire of the Olynipia and the other 
vessels. I saw the vessel turn and begin an attempt to re- 
treat ; but as she swung about, an eight-inch shell from one 
of our guns raked the ship fore and aft. We learned later 
that this single shell killed the captain and sixty men, hope- 
lessly crippled the ship, and set her on fire. Several other 
ships were burning fiercely as at 7 130 the signal was given 
and our fleet drew off. 

This was the signal that the Spaniards misconstrued as 
a sign that the Americans had retreated to repair damages. 
The truth is that Commodore Dewey desired to consult his 
captains and also to give all hands breakfast. The men had 
been" fighting in the fierce heat for two hours, and they were 
worn with fatigue and hunger. 

Looking over to Cavite, the sight was one that no one 
who beheld it will ever forget. The forts of Manila and 
batteries at Cavite were throwing tons of shot and shell 
across the water; but all were wasted, as they fell short of 
the fleet. Along near the shore the Rcina Christina was in 
a blaze and the Castilla was burning. 

At 10:45 the attack was resumed. Nothing in the whole 
engagement showed more nerve than the dash made by the 
Baltimore and the Olynipia up to the Cavite batteries. It 
was vitally necessary that these batteries should be silenced, 
as the fleet lay behind them, and the forts mounted big 
guns that could sink any of our ships with one well-planted 
shot. Both ships steamed full speed straight for the fort. 
We saw the Baltimore disappear in a cloud of smoke. Then 



102 The Progress of a United People 

we entered it and delivered a broadside. Nothing human 
could stand such a fire, well delivered at close range, and 
the Spaniards were forced to abandon their guns. 

Then all the ships turned their guns on the remnant of 
the Spanish fleet, and under the terrible fire the Don Antonio 
de Ulloa sank with her colors flymg. The big American 
ships did not dare venture far inside the harbor, but the 
Concord and the Petrel steamed in and shelled forts and 
ships. The Concord drove the crew of one hundred men 
from the transport Mindanao and set her on fire, while the 
Petrel burned all the ships she found afloat. At five 
minutes after one o'clock the white flag went up on Cavite 
fort. 

When our men caught sight of this flag cheers went up 
which stirred one's blood. The sailors were beside them- 
selves with joy, and cheered, shouted, hugged one another, 
and indulged in many other signs of rejoicing. Then came 
the report that no lives had been lost, and the cheering was 
redoubled. 

At noon the day after the battle the Spanish evacuated 
Cavite. I was sent ashore to bury eight Spaniards, and 
landed at the hospital on the point near Cavite. I went 
through all its wards. The sight was terrible. It is a good 
hospital, with detached wards in little pavilions grouped 
about the central buildings. Everything was in good order 
and cleanly. I conversed with several of the doctors in 
French, as I do not speak Spanish and they had no English 
at command. They were extremely courteous, but to my 
question, *' How many Spanish w^ere killed and wounded? " 
they replied sadly that they did not know. In the wards 
I saw over eighty wounded. The horrors of war were seen 
at their worst. Some of the men were fearfully burned, 



The Battle of Manila Bay 103 

some with limbs freshly amputated, others with their eyes 
shot out, their features torn away by steel or splinters — 
every kind of injury that surgery records. The shrieks and 
groans of the wounded were appalling. I could not stay to 
hear them, though my profession is calculated to harden one 
against such scenes. Had I been working, I should have 
endured it, but as an onlooker it was unbearable. We had 
received urgent messages from these doctors saying for 
God's sake to send Americans to guard the hospital against 
the insurgents, who, they feared, would murder them and 
their patients. We had posted guards as soon as possible, 
but not before the insurgents had robbed them of all the 
clothing not on their backs and all their food except enough 
for twelve hours. 

It seemed incredible to us, after the smoke and excite- 
ment of battle had cleared away, that we had lost not a 
single man, and that not a single ship had been seriously 
damaged. Primarily- to the wretched gunnery of the 
Spanish we owed our escape; but there was an element 
of luck also in the escape of so many vessels from random 
shots. Many of their guns were old, but still they had 
enough good guns afloat and ashore to have made a destruc- 
tive fight had they had the skill to handle them. Of am- 
munition and torpedoes also they had an ample store. No 
one who witnessed the Spaniards in action could say that 
they lacked courage. In fact, they exposed themselves, yet 
their valor was wasted in this long-range fighting. It was 
the oft-told story of the man behind the gun. 

NARRATIVE OF JOEL C. EVANS, GUNNER OF THE " BOSTON." 

I was in charge of the forward ammunition supply on 
the Boston during the battle of Manila Bay. I can only 



104 ^^^ Progress of a United People 

tell of the battle as I saw it and heard of its incidents at the 
time from officers and men aboard the American men-of- 
war. 

About five o'clock, just as daylight brightened the horizon, 
we were rushed to cjuarters without breakfast except a bite 
of hardtack and some cold meat. My station was on the 
forward berth-deck. My duties were to see that the am- 
munition called for from above was sent on deck wath the 
utmost despatch and without mistakes in the size and kind 
desired. All the ammunition is stored in the lower hold, 
or the part of the ship next to the keel, there being dif- 
ferent compartments for the powder, the shells, and the fixed 
ammunition. Technically, I had charge of the " forward 
powder division," and under me were twenty-five men. 
They were firemen and coal-heavers, off duty in the engine- 
room and trained to man the whips. They were used "to 
their work, as this was their regular battle station, and even 
in practice the same discipline was deforced as when now 
we were fighting for country and life. 

Nothing had been neglected, and we were in perfect 
readiness when at daybreak we descried a line of merchant 
vessels at anchor, and soon afterward the Spanish men-of- 
war. Nine were counted drawn up in battle array. Now 
began our work in earnest. 

The most exciting incident of the battle, perhaps never ex- 
ceeded in its audacity and its fearful results for the attack- 
ing party, was the attempt of two torpedo-boats to destroy 
the Olympia. They waited as she approached, and then 
came at her full speed. The Olympia poured a storm of big 
shells about them, but they presented such a small target 
at the distance of several miles that they were not hit, and 
each moment of their nearer approach was filled with sus- 



The Battle of Manila Bay 105 

pense and dread for all on our ships. Insignificant as they 
were, they might send the flag-ship to the bottom of the 
bay, and every shot directed at them carried a prayer for 
its success. When within eight hundred yards the Olympia 
used her secondary battery, and almost drowned the torpe- 
do-boats in a rain of projectiles. The one which led sud- 
denly paused, and then, coming on a few feet, blew up and 
sank with her crew. The other fled for the beach, and was 
found there the next day, a mere sieve, battered and blood- 
stained. 

The engagement was a general one by this time, and 
forts and ships fired at one another with the fury of despera- 
tion on one side and perfect confidence on the other. 

It was a lesson to see how quickly we relapsed into the 
routine of ship life after firing had ceased. Decks were 
washed and galley fires lighted. The big events that came 
later are better told by those who were in authority. It 
w^as related to me by an officer on the Olympia that when 
the token of surrender had been shown, Dewey turned to 
his staflf and said : " I 've the prettiest lot of men that ever 
stepped on shipboard, and their hearts are as stout as the 
ships." 

After the first flush of victory there w^as much work to 
be done, and we were all busy for several days. Incidents 
of the hot hours of fighting were recalled, and at mess the 
heroic and the ludicrous were mingled in the talk. Among 
the gunners the favorite discussion was the marksmanship 
of the Spanish. They lacked only skill to make a good 
fight. They had had scarcely any target practice. We of 
the Boston had had thirteen practice shoots in a twelve- 
month. We husbanded our ammunition during the bat- 
tle, while they poured it prodigally into the bay. They 



io6 The Progress of a United People 

seemed to fire at random during the engagement of our en- 
tire fleet, whereas each American gunner had his target and 
concentrated his fire upon it. The British naval officers 
in Hong-Kong knew the difference between us and the 
Spanish in this particular, and when we were leaving port 
for Manila the captain of the Imrnortalite shouted to Cap- 
tain Wildes : " You will surely win. I have seen too much 
of your target practice to doubt it." The British in China 
were confident of our victory when we sailed, but I believe 
that the Russian, German, and French naval officers thought 
Spain would conquer. 



/ 



\ 



"-'*..,. 




The Dewey Medal. 



Provided by act of Congress for those who took part in the battle of Manila Bay 



CUTTING A HEMISPHERE IN TWO 
By George Ethelbert Walsh 

Before the present generation of children has grown up, 
an important feature of their geographies will be changed 
to describe North and South America as two great islands 
instead of one continuous continent. As the work of cut- 
ting the Western Hemisphere in two is in charge of the 
American government, there is little question about its final 
success. Modern machinery and methods of engineering 
work can accomplish what the French people failed to do 
a quarter of a century ago, and with American genius and 
enterprise back of the undertaking, the Panama Canal will 
doubtless soon be an accomplished fact. 

This great " dream of the navigator " is almost as old as 
the discovery of America. It was when the conviction 
spread abroad in Europe that Columbus had only discovered 
a new continent, and not a new western passage to the 
wealth of the Indies, that men of science and travel began 
to think of opening a navigable channel from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific. As early as 1581, a survey was made to see 
if North and South America could not be cut in two. 
Captain Antonio Pereira, Governor of Costa Rica, explored 
a route by way of the San Juan River, the lake of the same 
name, and the rivers which empty into the Gulf of Nicoya, 
Costa Rica. This early survey was the first actual begin- 
ning of the story of Panama, which now promises to reach 
a conclusion wuthin the next ten years. Diego de Mercado, 

107 



io8 The Progress of a United People 

about thirty-nine years later, made a survey of the Nicara- 
gua route, and recommended to King Philip of Spain the 
construction of an interoceanic canal along the lines de- 
scribed by him. 

From that time to the year when the French company, 
under the famous French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, 




Las Cruces, a typical village of the Republic of Panama. 

essayed to cut the Isthmus of Panama in two, the Nicaragua 
and Panama routes have been periodically surveyed and re- 
surveyed until probably no other out-of-the-way corner of 
the earth has received half as much examination and geo- 
graphical attention. Many schemes of constructing the canal 
were proposed. Navigators of all parts of the world 
realized the importance of the canal or of some other 
method of transportation across the isthmus. One of the 
boldest conceptions was made by an American engineer, 
James B. Eads, who proposed to construct at Tehuantepec 



Cutting a Hemisphere in Two 109 

a railroad from ocean to ocean, or rather from the Pacific 
Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, capable of carrying the largest 
ships. Gigantic engines and flat-cars were to be built to 
run on double track. These cars were to run down an in- 
cline into great locks, so that ocean steamers could be 
floated upon them. Then the engines would cross the nar- 
row tongue of land and launch the steamers in the ocean op- 
posite. In this novel way the journey around the world, 
or from Europe to the East Indies, would not be inter- 
rupted, and passengers could go to sleep on the Atlantic 
and wake up the next morning on the Pacific. 

But the great ship railroad was never built, and the agi- 
tation for digging the canal to cut the Western Hemisphere 
in two was continued. The great scheme possessed a pecu- 
liar fascination for men of science and commerce; but it 
was not until 1879 that the first positive step was taken to 
realize the dream of the ages. In that year an interna- 
tional congress was held in Paris, and before it appeared 
Ferdinand de Lesseps to espouse the cause of a French en- 
gineering company, organizing to undertake the work of 
separating North and South America by a ship-canal. 

The Isthmus of Panama is a narrow strip of land, 
scarcely twenty-one miles wide at its narrowest point; but 
the canal, owing to the character of the land, would have a 
total length of about forty-six miles. To cut a ship-canal 
of this length, the early French company estimated, would 
cost 843,000,000 francs, which later was reduced by De 
Lesseps to 600,000,000 francs, or about $120,000,000 of 
our money. This huge cost did not deter the people of 
France from buying the bonds and stocks of the Panama 
Canal Company, and the money was soon raised. The 
genius of the company was the man who had constructed 



110 The Progress of a United People 

the Suez Canal, and his presence at the head of the under- 
taking was sufficient to give faith and confidence to all. 
De Lesseps himself was so confident of his success that he 
extended invitations to prominent men all over the w^orld 
to attend the opening of the canal in 1888. 

The first shipment of machinery and workmen arrived 
in Colon on February 21, 1881, and almost immediately be- 
gan one of the most dramatic stories of modern times. 
Fraud, incompetency, mismanagement, and lack of knowl- 
edge of the grave conditions that confronted the contrac- 
tors on the Isthmus combined to delay the work, and in 
time to wreck the company. The inside history of the 
story may never be made perfectly plain to the world. 
Millions of dollars' worth of machinery that was never 
used was shipped to the Isthmus. The whole length of the 
proposed canal is marked by these monuments to man's mis- 
management and greed. Extensive camps and hospitals 
were built on the route of the canal, and thousands of work- 
men were sent down, only to die in the fever-ridden climate 
or to return home disgusted. 

The second chapter in the story of the Isthmus of 
Panama opens with the United States. Up to this time 
American engineers had favored the Nicaragua route; but 
with the failure of the second French Panama Canal Com- 
pany public attention in this country was directed to the 
Isthmus. The United States government sent several com- 
missioners to the Isthmus to report on the feasibility of 
buying up the French rights and property. 

The first American commission reported that a canal 
could be completed at an expenditure of $67,000,000 by 
way of Nicaragua, but later this estimate was raised to 
$140,000,000. 



Cutting a Hemisphere in Two ill 

In 1889 President McKinley sent another commission 
south to study the problem of cutting the hemisphere in two. 
Negotiations were begun with the directors of the old French 
Panama Company, and after years of fruitless work it was 
decided to transfer the rights of France to America. Ac- 
cording to this agreement, the United States government 
is to pay to the French Panama Canal Company $40,000,- 
000 for all its rights and privileges. It is further estimated 
by the American Panama Canal Company, which receives 
the property and concessions, that $184,233,358 will be re- 
quired to complete the forty-six miles of canal. 

Since the ratification of this agreement by the two coun- 
tries, events have moved rapidly on the Isthmus, and every 
boy and girl must be familiar with the changes that created 
the new Republic of Panama. 

The third chapter of the story of the canal begins wath 
the events of to-day,* and will end when our country will 
throw open the canal to the commerce of the world. Will 
American control of the canal complete wnthin this time one 
of the most important engineering schemes the world has 
ever faced? In paying to the French shareholders $40,- 
000,000, the American company acquires the right to all 
the machinery and plant equipments on the Isthmus; but 
the engineers in calculating the cost took no note of this 
neglected property. Of the $20,000,000 worth of ma- 
chinery on the Isthmus, including miles of steel rails, scores 
of steamers, dredges, scores bf machine-shops, and acres of 
dump-cars, probably not more than one tenth will ever prove 
of any actual value. So injurious to iron and steel is the 
effect of the tropical climate that much of the machinery 
is rusted beyond repair. Some of it, it is said, has become 

* Written in 1904. 



112 The Progress of a United People 

so rotten that one can push a hat-pin through almost as 
easily as if it was so much cheese. 

There are nearly 2,500 buildings on the Isthmus belong- 
ing to the company, and accommodations for nearly 20,000 
laborers. The hospitals are valued at a million dollars, and 
the machine-shops at half as much more. But everything 
is in a sad state of decay and neglect. On all sides stand 
monuments to the criminal folly and mismanagement of the 
early company. The canal route is to-day covered over 
with a luxuriant growth of plants, vines, and trees; but 






V- 



-#->.. 




Houses for workmen along the line ot the Canal 



scratch the surface anywhere and there come to light the 
most unexpected signs of French workmanship. Every 
sort of article, from kitchen utensils to locomotives and 
dump-carts, appears half embedded in the soil. 

Engineering science and sanitary science have both ad- 



Cutting a Hemisphere in Two 113 

vanced with wondrous strides since those early days of ac- 
tivity on the Isthmus, and it may be that the problem of 
digging the canal is not now so formidable an undertaking 
as many imagine. For one thing, engineers know how to 
fight fevers and disease in the tropics as never before, and 
the workman will be safeguarded from the climate in every 
possible way. Numerous hospitals and sanitary camps will 
be established among the first things, and those who go to 
dig the canal will not leave behind them all hope of surviv- 
ing their work. 

The value of the canal to the commerce of the world 
can be readily understood by any girl or boy who will refer 
to a common map of the world. Both the United States 
and Europe will reap great benefits from it. By the pres- 
ent route, steamers sailing from New York to San Fran- 
cisco by way of the Strait of Magellan must cover some 
13,090 miles, including the usual stops required for coal- 
ing. When the canal across the Isthmus of Panama is 
opened, the distance will be shortened to 5,294 miles — a 
saving of nearly 8,000 miles. Steamers bound from Euro- 
pean ports would find almost equal advantages. Those 
sailing from Hamburg to San Francisco would have their 
present route shortened by 5,648 miles. 

Steamers sailing from New York to Australia and New 
Zealand now go by the way of Cape of Good Hope. By 
going through the new canal this route would be shortened 
between 3,500 and 5,175 miles, according to the port they 
were bound for. Our ships from the Atlantic seaboard 
must now pass through the Suez Canal to reach China and 
Japan in the most direct way. The total distance from 
New York to Yokohama, Japan, is 13,040 miles, and 
through the Panama Canal it would be reduced to 10,088 



114 The Progress of a United People 

miles. From New York to Shanghai, China, the saving in 
distance through the canal would amount to 1,339 miles. 
To the Oriental countries the saving is thus not so great 
as along our own coast and to our Pacific Ocean possessions, 
owing to the fact that China and Japan are nearly opposite 
us on the globe. But to Hawaii there would be a distinct 
saving of 6,581 miles. 

Saving in time and distance does not mean so much to 
sailing vessels, but it is very important to ocean steamers. 
With coal at three or four dollars per ton wholesale, the 
saving in money from a trip through the Panama Canal 
would quickly mount up into thousands of dollars. It is 
estimated that from New York to San Francisco the actual 
saving in coal for the average freight steamer would be 
$3,000. The saving in time would be even more important. 
A steamer on this line makes only about two round trips a 
year through the Strait of Magellan, but through the 
Panama Canal at least five round trips a year probably 
could be made. 

It might be interesting to go further into figures to show 
how much the Panama Canal would benefit the world, such 
as the total tonnage that would be likely to pass through the 
narrow waterway each year, and the extra number of pass- 
enger ships that would ply between New York and San 
Francisco ; but sufficient has been said to convince any one 
of the great need of this new waterway. By dividing a 
hemisphere, man will create a new commerce of the world, 
and bring the countries of both sides of the globe into closer 
relationship. Next to girdling the globe with submarine 
cables, therefore, this work of cutting through the Isthmus 
of Panama will prove, it is hardly too much to say, the 
most important commercial event of the age. 



ATLANTIC ^x^ 




PAC 1 ri C 

Map of the route of the Panama Canal. 



THE PANAMA CANAL 



By William Barclay Parsons 

Member of the Isthmian Canal Commission of 1904-1905 
]\Iember of the Board of Consulting Engineers 

The story of a transisthmian canal begins on that day 
when Balboa, after struggling through a tropical jungle 
and up the steep flank of a mountain-range in what is now 
Darien, saw, to his astonishment, another great and un- 
known ocean. Since then there has been a steadily in- 
creasing pressure to complete the quest of Columbus and 
find, or, if it could not be found, then to make, a passage 
from the West to the Far East. AA'ith the indomitable will 
of the freebooter of the Spanish Main, who balked at no 

115 



li6 The Progress of a United People 

obstacle, Balboa solved the difficulty so far as he was con- 
cerned by carrying his ships piece by piece, spar by -spar, 
across the Isthmus and fitting them out on the Pacific. 
The modern ship cannot be treated so lightly ; and since 
nature has failed to pierce the narrow neck of land separa- 
ting the two great seas, it is left to the men of the twentieth 
century, not to carry their ships as did he of the sixteenth, 
but to provide an artificial river through which the modern 
leviathans can be navigated in safety. 

As soon as Balboa's discovery had been followed up so 
as to prove the unbroken continuance of land between the 
main continents of the two Americas, the attention of the 
early explorers was drawn to the possibility of constructing 
a waterway, and even Cortez made surveys for one at 
Tehuantepec. But the great task of cutting through the 
Continental Divide was quite beyond the powers of any 
appliances then existing, or even of such as were developed 
during the next three hundred and fifty years. 

THE ATLANTIC END OE THE CANAL IS THE WEST END. 

Before considering the canal and its details, it is well to 
fix in the mind the geographical location of Panama; for, 
extraordinary as it may appear, but few grasp the singular 
features of its position. The ordinary conception of North 
and South America is, that the two great continents are situ- 
ated directly north and south of each other, and that Panama 
lies on about the median axis of the United States, or, say, 
south of the Mississippi Valley. A glance at a map, how- 
ever, will show that South America does not lies due south 
of North America, but wholly to the east of the meridian 
of Florida, so that the eastern coast of Brazil lies more 



The Panama Canal 



117 




Abandoned French dredge. 



nearly south of London than of New York. The result is 
that the Isthmus of Panama is not only east of Havana and 
Key West, but is about on a line with Buffalo. As the 
Isthmus of 'Panama 
lies east and west 
and not north and 
south, as it is popu- 
larly pictured ; and as 
the canal runs from 
northwest to south- 
east, the Atlantic end 
of the canal lies west 
of the Pacific end, 
so that the west end 

becomes the east end. These apparent geographical para- 
doxes have a most important bearing upon the commercial 
aspects of the canal, especially as they are related to the 
Pacific coast. 

The shortest distance between any two points on a sphere 
is by a " great circle," that is, a line cut on the surface of 
the sphere by a plane passing through the two points in 
question and the center of the sphere itself. The great 
circle connecting Panama with Japan and China or any 
point on the eastern Asiatic coast passes through the Carib- 
bean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, Galveston, Denver, strikes 
the Pacific coast of the United States north of Seattle, and 
skirts the Aleutian Islands. The navigator will keep his 
ship as close to the above route between the Isthmus and 
any port in the Far East as land permits. That is, after 
passing through the canal, he will first go south, then north- 
west along the coast of Central America and Mexico, and, 
after clearing Cape St. Lucas, the southern end of Lower 



Ii8 The Progress of a United People 



California, he will take the great circle from there to Asia, 
and this great circle will carry him about 1,700 miles to the 
east of Hawaii and only 300 miles west of San Francisco. 
As the ordinary tramp 
freight-steamer cannot, or 
will not wish to, carry 
enough coal to 
take her from the 
Isthmus to Asia, 







Excavator at work in 
the Culebra Cut. 



she will have to stop at 
the most conv-enient in- 
termediate point for coal and supplies. This point will be 
San Francisco, distant 3,277 miles from Panama and 4,536 
miles from Yokohama ; and in order to make such call, she 
will be lengthening her passage only no miles, or less 
than half a day in time, over the shortest possible course 
in a total distance of 7,813 miles. The extraordinary re- 
sult — one apparently not generally understood by the 
American public — is that San Francisco will become the 



The Panama Canal 



119 



" key " and gateway of the Pacific, where all vessels going 
to the Far East, not only from the Atlantic seaboard, but 
from Europe as well, will stop for coal and supplies. This 





American excavator at work. 

coal, if it be not found of satisfactory quality on the West- 
ern coast, will be brought in special vessels from Ala- 
bama and West Virginia and stored, awaiting consumption, 
as Cardiff coal is now stored at various points along the 
Suez route in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. 
At no place will the existence of the canal be more in 
evidence than at San Francisco, where a continuous pro- 



120 The Progress of a United People 



cession of east- and west-bound steamers will be stopping 
daily. 

THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT IN CONTROL. 

The conditions 
confronting the 
United States 

government differ 
radically, how- 
ever, from those 
which confronted 
the French com- 
panies, or that 
would confront 
any private com- 
pany that can be 
' irganized. For 
I he outlay made 
l)y the American 
government, act- 
ual property or a 
full equivalent in 
work has been 
Inspection car. obtained, and no 

unnecessary capital of wasted money weighs down the 
enterprise. By the cession to the American government, 
by the new Republic of Panama, of a strip of territory ten 
miles wide from ocean to ocean, in perpetuity, all question 
of a concession life is permanently removed; and, finally, 
inasmuch as the American government will not have to 
consider a canal from the point of view of returning a large 
profit on an investment, and as it can obtain the necessary 




The Panama Canal 



121 



funds at an interest charge certainly one half of what would 
have to be paid by a private organization, it is obvious 
that plans can be considered that will involve a much larger 
capital investment, and that will require more time for 
completion. In short, the American government is free 
from ordinary limitations. 

CHANGE IN CONDITIONS. 

The question is frequently asked, How are conditions so 
radically changed since the French failure to build a sea- 
level canal as to permit the United States to undertake it 
now with any hope of success? In the first place, the first 
French management was incompetent and extravagant al- 



^> 




-«4a^^ ^ , siei^aar^. ,'y>'^:' " 



te 



^r^-^^^^-^^' 



^ 




The condition of the Culebra Cut, Christmas eve, 1904. 



122 The Progress of a United People 

most beyond conception. Secondly, both it and its succes- 
sor, the New Company, were private corporations working 
for a commercial profit, and obliged to pay at least six per 
cent, for their capital ; whereas the American government, 
being able to borrow at almost one third that rate, can invest 
nearly three times the same capital without placing any 
greater annual burden on the enterprise. Thirdly, great 
progress has taken place in machine-excavators, by which 
the material can be handled more cheaply, while the pre- 
viously unrealizable development of electric power at 
Gamboa will pay for that portion of the construction. 
Finally, as a justification if not a reason, ships have in- 
creased so greatly in size that what would have sufficed 
twenty years ago would be inadequate now. 

A CANAL FOR AMERICA. 

The greatest beneficiary of the canal will be the people of 
the United States, so that the Panama Canal will be essen- 
tially an American canal, except that until our navigation 




ATLAfJTir OrCAN 



...iiM^^J' 




Cross-section of the Isthmus on canal route. 

laws are either increased or decreased the American flag 
from vessels' peaks will not be seen as often as those of 
other nations. From north European ports to India, China, 
and Japan the distance by either Suez or Panama will be 
substantially the same; and therefore vessels will probably 



The Panama Canal 123 

continue to use the established trade route, except in the 
case of very large ships that cannot pass over the restricted 
depth of the Suez Canal, which limits them to a draft of 
twenty-eight feet. From Great Britain and Germany to 
Australia and New Zealand there will be a saving in dis- 
tance of about fifteen hundred miles over Suez — sufficient 
probably to be a determining factor. For American trade 
the shortening will be all-important. From New York to 
Manila the difference is small ; but to Yokohama it amounts 
to 3,729 nautical miles; to Shanghai, 1,629 miles; and, as 
against the route via the Straits of Magellan, to Callao, 
6,343 miles ; and to San Francisco, 7,640 miles. It will 
bring the grain-fields of the northwestern Pacific States 
6,000 miles nearer Liverpool ; and it will bring the iron and 
coal of the Gulf States shipped from New Orleans and 
Pensacola, 9,500 miles nearer San Francisco; giving to the 
former a new great market not now open, and to the latter 
a cheap supply of the raw materials of manufacturing. In 
the past the great bulk of our foreign trade has been w^ith 
Europe. Great as is the transatlantic trade, the transpacific 
presents greater possibilities. On the far shores of this 
ocean there are 400,000,000 persons eager to do business, 
and rapidly awakening to an appreciation of the benefits of 
foreign commerce. The Panama Canal will be second only 
to the transcontinental railways in developing American 
trade, both internal and foreign. 

It has been announced that the American government is 
to give all nations equal terms and equal rights, and to levy 
toll without regard to commercial profit. Such a course, 
in bringing nearer the ends of the earth and drawing closer 
the peoples thereof, is the greatest promise of universal 
peace, and a long step toward the time when disputes be- 



124 ^^^ Progress of a United People 

tween nations, like those between individuals, will be ad- 
justed without an appeal to arms. 

When at last the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific are 
commingled there will be gathered the full fruits of the dis- 
covery by Balboa, who not only lost his life upon the 
Isthmus, but would also have been robbed of the glory of 
the discovery, in favor of Cortez, if the poet Keats could 
have had his way when he said : 

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men 

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise, 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 








- '^, 




— 


•rr 




The old 


water 


department 


of 


Panama, 



THE WRIGHT BROTHERS' AEROPLANE 
By Orville and Wilbur Wright 

With Pictures from Photographs Supplied by the Authors 

Though the subject of aerial navigation is generally con- 
sidered new, it has occupied the minds of men more or less 
from the earliest ages. Our personal interest in it dates 
from our childhood days. Late in the autumn of 1878, our 
father came into the house one evening with some object 
partly concealed in his hands, and before we could see what 
it was, he tossed it into the air. Listead of falling to the 





A gliding flight. (October 21, 1903.) 
125 



126 The Progress of a United People 

floor, as we expected, it flew across the room till it struck 
the ceiling, where it fluttered awhile, and finally sank to the 
floor. It was a little toy, known to scientists as a helicop- 
tere, but which we, with sublime disregard for science, at 
once dubbed a '' bat." It was a light frame of cork and 
bamboo, covered with paper, which formed two screws, 
driven in opposite directions by rubber bands under torsion. 
A toy so delicate lasted only a short time in the hands of 
small boys, but its memory was abiding. 

Several years later we began building these helicopteres 
for ourselves, making each one larger than that preceding. 
But, to our astonishment, we found that the larger the 
'' bat," the less it flew. We did not know that a machine 
having only twice the linear dimensions of another would 
require eight times the power. We finally became dis- 
couraged, and returned to kite-flying, a sport to which we 
had devoted so much attention that we were regarded as 
experts. But as we became older, we had to give up this 
fascinating sport as unbecoming to boys of our ages. 

In the field of aviation there were two schools. The 
first, represented by such men as Professor Langley and 
Sir Hiram Maxim, gave chief attention to power flight; 
the second, represented iDy Lilienthal, Mouillard, and 
Chanute, to soaring flight. Our sympathies were with the 
latter school, partly from impatience at the wasteful ex- 
travagance of mounting delicate and costly machinery on 
wings which no one knew how to manage, and partly", no 
doubt, from the extraordinary charm and enthusiasm with 
which the apostles of soaring flight set forth the beauties of 
sailing through the air on fixed wings, deriving the motive 
power from the wind itself. 

The balancing of a flyer may seem, at first thought, to 



The Wright Brothers' Aeroplane 127 

be a very simple matter, yet almost every experimenter had 
found in this the one point which he could not satisfactorily 
master. 

The period from 1885 to 1900 was one of unexampled 
activity in aeronautics, and for a time there was high hope 
that the age of flying was at hand. But Maxim, after 
spending $100,000, abandoned the work; the Ader machine, 
built at the expense of the French Government, was a fail- 
ure ; Lilienthal and Pilcher were killed in experiments ; and 
Chanute and many others, from one cause or another, had 
relaxed their efforts, though it subsequently became known 
that Professor Langley was still secretly at work on a ma- 
chine for the United States Government. The public, 
discouraged by the failures and tragedies just witnessed, 
considered flight beyond the reach of man, and classed 
its adherents with 
the inventors of per- 
petual motion. 

We began our 
active experiments at 
the close of this 
period, in October, 
1900, at Kitty Hawk, 
North Carolina. 

Our machine was 
designed to be flown 
as a kite, with a man 

on board, in winds ^^.^^^^ November 9, 1904. 

of from fifteen to 

twenty miles an hour. But, upon trial, it was found that 
much stronger winds were required to lift it. Suitable 
winds not being plentiful, we found it necessary, in order 





128 The Progress of a United People 

to test the new balancing system, to fly the machine as a 
kite without a man on board, operating the levers through 
cords from the ground. This did not give the practice 
anticipated, but it inspired confidence in the new system of 
balance. 

In the summer of 1901 we became personally acquainted 
with Mr. Chanute. When he learned that we were inter- 
ested in flying as a sport, and not with any expectation of 
recovering the money we were expending on it, he gave us 
much encouragement. At our invitation, he spent several 
weeks with us at our camp at Kill Devil Hill, four miles 
south of Kitty Hawk, during our experiments of that and 
the two succeeding years. He also witnessed one flight of 
the power machine near Dayton, Ohio, in October, 1904. 

We then turned to gliding — coasting down hill on the 
air — as the only method of getting the desired practice in 



n 




Flight, November 16, 1904. 



balancing a machine. After a few minutes' practice we were 
able to make glides of over 300 feet, and in a few days were 



The Wright Brothers' Aeroplane 129 

safely operating in twenty-seven-mile ^ winds. In these 
experiments we met with several unexpected phenomena. 
We found that, contrary to the teachings of the books, the 
center of pressure on a curved surface traveled backward 
when the surface 
was inclined, at small 
angles, more and 
more edgewise to the 
wind. We also dis- 
covered that in free 
flight, when the wing 
on one side of the 
machine was pre- 
sented to the wind at 
a greater angle than 
the one on the other side view, showing the machine traveling to 

qiVIp thp wino- with ^^^ "S^"'^' '^^'^^^ double horizontal rudder 
Siae, tne wmg Wltn .^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^j^ vertical rudder be- 

the greater angle de- hind. 

SCended and the ma- This flight was made September 29, 1905, and the 

' distance covered was twelve miles. 

chine turned in a di- 
rection just the reverse of what we were led to expect when 
flying the machine as a kite. The larger angle gave more 
resistance to forward motion and reduced the speed of the 
wing on that side. The decrease in speed more than coun- 
terbalanced the effect of the larger angle. The addition of 
a fixed vertical vane in the rear increased the trouble, and 
made the machine absolutely dangerous. It was some time 
before a remedy was discovered. This consisted of movable 
rudders working in conjunction with the twisting of the 

1 The gliding flights were all made against the wind. The difficulty 
in^ high winds is in maintaining balance, not in traveling against the 
wind. 

9 




130 The Progress of a United People 

wings. The details of this arrangement are given in our 
patent specifications, pubHshed several years ago. 

The experiments of 1901 were far from encouraging. 
Although Mr. Chanute assured us that, both in control and 
in weight carried per horse-power, the results obtained 
were better than those of any of our predecessors, 
yet we saw that the calculations upon which all flying- 
machines had been based were unreliable, and that all were 
simply groping in the dark. Having set out with abso- 
lute faith in the existing scientific data, we were driven 
to doubt one thing after another, till finally, after two 
years of experiment, we cast it all aside, and decided to rely 
entirely upon our own investigations. Truth and error 
were everywhere so intimately mixed as to be undistin- 
guishable. 

To work intelligently, one needs to know the effects of 
a multitude of variations that could be incorporated in the 
surfaces of flying-machines. The pressures on squares are 
different from those on rectangles, circles, triangles, or 
ellipses ; arched surfaces differ from planes, and vary among 
themselves according to the depth of curvature; true arcs 
differ from parabolas, and the latter differ among them- 
selves; thick surfaces differ from thin, and surfaces thick- 
er in one place than another vary in pressure when the posi- 
tions of maximum thickness are different ; some surfaces 
are most efficient at one angle, others at other angles. The 
shape of the edge also makes a difference, so that thousands 
of combinations are possible in so simple a thing as a wing. 

We had taken up aeronautics merely as a sport. We 
reluctantly entered upon the scientific side of it. But we 
soon found the work so fascinating that we were drawn 
into it deeper and deeper. Two testing-machines were 



The Wright Brothers' Aeroplane 131 

built, which we beheved would avoid the errors to which 
the measfirements of others had been subject. 

In September and October, 1902, nearly one thousand 
gliding flights were made, several of which covered dis- 
tances of over 600 feet. Some, made against a wind of 
thirty-six miles an hour, gave proof of the effectiveness of 
the devices for control. With this machine, in the autumn 
of 1903, we made a number of flights in which we remained 
in the air for over a minute, often soaring for a consider- 
able time in one spot, without any descent at all. Little 
wonder that our unscientific assistant should think the only 
thing needed to keep it indefinitely in the air would be a 
coat of feathers to make it light ! 

With accurate data for making calculations, and a system 
of balance effective in winds as well as in calms, we were 
now in a position, we thought, to build a successful power- 
flyer. The first designs provided for a total weight of 600 
pounds, including the operator and an eight horse-power 
motor. But, upon completion, the motor gave more power 
than had been estimated, and this allowed 150 pounds to be 
added for strengthening the wings and other parts. 

We had not been flying long in 1904 before we found 
that the problem of equilibrium had not as yet been entirely 
solved. Sometimes, in making a circle, the machine would 
turn over sidewise despite anything the operator could do, 
although, under the same conditions in ordinary straight 
flight, it could have been righted in an instant. In one 
flight, in 1905, while circling around a honey locust-tree at 
a height of about fifty feet, the machine suddenly began to 
turn up on one wing, and took a course toward the tree. 
The operator, not relishing the idea of landing in a thorn- 
tree, attempted to reach the ground. The left wing, how- 



132 The Progress of a United People 

ever, struck the tree at a height of ten or twelve feet from 
the ground, and carried away several branches; but the 
flight, which had already covered a distance of six miles, 
was continued to the starting-point. 

The causes of these troubles — too technical for explana- 
tion here — were not entirely overcome till the end of Sep- 
tember, 1905. 

A practical flyer having been finally realized, we spent 
the years 1906 and 1907 in constructing new machines and 
in business negotiations. It was not till May of this year 
that experiments (discontinued in October, 1905) were 
resumed at Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina. The recent 
flights were made to test the ability of our machine to meet 
the requirements of a contract with the United States Gov- 
ernment to furnish a flyer capable of carrying two men 
and sufficient fuel supplies for a flight of 125 miles, with 
a speed of forty miles an hour. The machine used in these 
tests was the same one with which the flights were made at 
Simms Station in 1905, though several changes had been 
made to meet present requirements. The operator as- 
sumed a sitting position, instead of lying prone, as in 1905, 
and a seat was added for a passenger. A larger motor was 
installed, and radiators and gasolene reservoirs of larger 
capacity replaced those previously used. No attempt was 
made to make high or long flights. 

In order to show the general reader the way in which the 
machine operates, let us fancy ourselves ready for the start. 
The machine is placed upon a single rail track facing the 
wind, and is securely fastened with a cable. The engine is 
put in motion, and the propellers in the rear whir. You 
take your seat at the center of the machine beside tlie opera- 
tor. He slips the cable, and you shoot forward. An as- 



The Wright Brothers' Aeroplane 133 

sistant who has been holding the machine in balance on the 
rail, starts forward with you, but before you have gone 
fifty feet the speed is too great for him, and he lets go. 
Before reaching the end of the track the operator moves the 
front rudder, and the machine lifts from the rail like a kite 
supported by the pressure of the air underneath it. The 
ground under you is at first a perfect blur, but as you rise 
the objects become clearer. At a height of one hundred 
feet you feel hardly any motion at all, except for the wind 
which strikes your face. If you did not take the precaution 
to fasten your hat before starting, you have probably lost 
it by this time. The operator moves a lever : the right wing 
rises, and the machine swings about to the left. You make 
a very short turn, yet you do not feel the sensation of 
being thrown from your seat, so often experienced in auto- 
mobile and railway travel. You find yourself facing to- 
ward the point from which you started. The objects on 
the ground now seem to be moving at much higher speed, 
though you perceive no change in the pressure of the wind 
on your face. You know then that you are traveling with 
wind. When you near the starting-point, the operator 
stops the motor while still high in the air. The machine 
coasts down at an oblique angle to the ground, and after 
sliding fifty or a hundred feet comes to rest. Although 
the machine often lands when traveling at a speed of a mile 
a minute, you feel no shock whatever, and cannot, in fact, 
tell the exact moment at which it first touched the ground. 
The motor close beside you kept up an almost deafening 
roar during the whole flight, yet in your excitement, you 
did not notice it till it stopped ! 

Our experiments have been conducted entirely at our own 
expense. In the beginning we had no thought of recover- 



134 The Progress of a United People 

ing what we were expending, which was not great, and was 
limited to what we could afford for recreation. Later, 
when a successful flight had been made with a motor, we 
gave up the business in which we w^re engaged, to devote 
our entire time and capital to the development of a ma- 
chine for practical uses. 




Maxim's jfirst aeroplane. 



THE WESTERN RAILROAD 
By Ray Stannard Baker 

We of the unstirred East are accustomed to look upon 
the railroad as a mere feature of the landscape, a natural 
phenomenon to be enjoyed or suffered, as the case may be, 
a convenience subject to inconveniences. We may know 
the conductor of our favorite train and the station-agent, 
who also looks after our express packages; but the presi- 
dent of the road — who could be more distant and imper- 
sonal? For in the East the railroad is an incident; in the 
West, a destiny. 

You will not remain long in this new land before you 
feel the intimate, personal, paternal presence of the railroad, 
advising, beguiling, influencing, offering you largess here, 
blocking your pet purposes there, until you acquire a new 
idea of the meaning and function of the road. 

I shall not forget the surprised exclamation of a general 
agent when I innocently suggested that his road might be 
interested in Western development. 

" Why," he replied, '' the West is purely a railroad en- 
terprise. We started it in our publicity department." 

It was a remark that contains more than the usual grain 
of truth. The West was inevitable, but the railroad was 
the instrument of its fate. 

In the East, the railroad was built to connect important 
towns; it was amiably subservient to an old civilization; it 

135 



136 The Progress of a United People 

accepted the dictates of the alderman and the legislator, it 
came to town meekly, glad to find an unoccupied spot where 
it might plant its station, allowing small matters like streets 
to force it up in the air on bridges or bury it deep in tunnels ; 
but in the West the road developed the full stature of in- 
dependence. It pushed its way across States, counties, 
plains, mountains, consulting only the dictates of its own 
pleasure. Towns came because of the road, not the road 
because of the towns. Some official put an inky finger on 
the map. '' There," he said, '' is a good place for a city. 
Call it Smith's Coulee, after our master-mechanic." 

And the railroad, having thus a sort of automatic gift of 
prophecy, acquired all the land in the immediate neighbor- 
hood, reserved every possible privilege for itself, and of- 
fered corner lots to future inhabitants. First Smith's 
Coulee was a tank-stop, then a place on the map, then a 
post-office, then a town, then perhaps a city, with electric 
lights and telephones. Except the mining-camps, which 
grew up where they willed in spite of the road, this is the 
history of nearly all the towns of the West, even some of 
the most important. More than one Pacific coast port des- 
tined to become a great city ow^es its existence to the fact 
that an engineer found this particular spot the easiest ap- 
proach for his road. 

American towns have been denied individuality. " You 
see one," says the critic, " and you see all." But these 
Western railroad towns are peculiar unto themselves. The 
Montana town is the ^Montana town, and very different in- 
deed from the Ohio or the Alichigan town. Smith's 
Coulee lies close at the side of its parent, the railroad, as if 
fearing to venture out into the open plain — a single long, 
wide street, the grimy red station, freight-house, and water- 



The Western Railroad 137 

tank on one side, and a row of square-front, unpainted 
wooden stores on the other, with saddled cayuses standing, 
check-rein down, in front of the Gem Saloon. There is 
a general store, which is also the post-office, a feed stable, 
an agricultural-implement emporium, a barber shop, and 
numerous saloons, all in a row. The dust swirls in at one 
end of the street and out at the other, and twice every day 
the limited express goes streaking through. As the town 
grows, they plant a brick schoolhouse — the school is al- 
ways the best building in a Western town — on a fenced 
square of the desert, a little way out; then a bare wooden 
church with silent steeple rises on a corner — probably the 
first corner, geographical or moral, that the town ever had. 

Presently a side street appears, and a residential part, 
though it is difficult enough even for the homes to get away 
from the railroad. Then the road builds a coal-bin be- 
yond the water-tank, paints it red, and another street opens 
on the farther side of the tracks, with a feed and hardware 
store at the crossing. At the end of the fourth year. 
Smith's Coulee has a Fourth-of-July celebration; the in- 
habitants declare it good, and it grows and waxes strong. 
At the end of ten years it has become the greatest in the 
world in something or other — in the number of horses it 
ships to market, or the amount of alfalfa it raises, or the 
height of the stand-pipe of its water-works. 

With coming self -consciousness it discovers a bitter rival 
in Jones City, fifty miles farther up the track, named after 
the fourth vice-president and celebrated as having the best 
baseball team in the State. Earnest, strenuous, ambitious 
towns are these, full of ozone and energy. The ubiquitous 
commercial traveler Avho occupies the best chair in the 
smoking compartment will tell you that they are " lively 



138 The Progress of a United People 

towns," " good business places," and how much they sell 
of shoes and saddles and calico. 

Smith's Coulee and Jones City read many newspapers, 
— read out of all proportion to their size, — and go into 
politics as though politics really meant something. Two 
parties grow up, extra-political, but enthusiastic, one pro- 
railroad, the other anti-railroad. And still later, especially 
during hard times, they amalgamate and become fiercely 
anti-railroad (including all the inhabitants except the 
station-agent and the roundhouse foreman). Petitions are 
drawn up and resolutions are adopted looking to the reduc- 
tion of freight-rates. We of the East live in peaceful ig- 
norance of freight-rates, but if you talk any length of time 
with any Western business man, you will find him veering 
around sooner or later to freight-rates. He will tell you 
that if the road would only make a through tariff (he speaks 
volubly of tariffs, differentials, yardage, and the like) of 
forty-eight cents instead of fifty-three, — only five cents 
reduction, mind you, — a new industry would blossom forth- 
with, cities would boom joyfully, settlers would rush in ; 
but while the rate is fifty-three cents, any one can see that 
ruin is the only outcome. Mass-meetings are held, letters 
are printed in the papers. Congress is petitioned, the in- 
fluential citizen puts on his derby hat and goes to see the 
officials ; but the patriarchal road, driving its red trains across 
a thousand miles of desert and over two mountain ranges, 
in the dust and heat of summer and the deep snows of 
winter, goes its superior way, and the rate remains at fifty- 
three. But the road has not forgotten its people, though 
they wax impatient. By and by, to-morrow, when that 
tunnel in Idaho is finished and the coal-mine in Wyoming 
is opened, after the people have entirely forgotten the heat 



The Western Railroad 139 

of the freight controversy in the absorbing attempt to 
compel the road to make Smith's a regular stop for its 
much belauded express (dining-car, barber shop, library, 
and all that), the road calmly makes a rate of forty-nine, 
or perhaps forty-five or forty-two, and no one thinks any- 
thing more about it. 

Built upon faith in a virgin country, with a restless, ex- 
pansive, ambitious people, the road is ever solicitous for 
development, being wholly unable to look upon its plains and 
mountains except with the eye of the prophetic imagina- 
tion. If you doubt, read the newest railroad pamphlet, 
and you will see the very desert smiling with crops, gold 
bursting from the hills, and deer and elk and bear to be 
seen from the car windows. Talk with the special agent, 
and lose your very soul in longing for a Montana farm or 
an Oregon orchard or a Colorado ranch. Ask any 
settler in some part of the West why he immigrated, 
and he will invariably point you back to the beguil- 
ing road, a pamphlet, a fevered folder, an enthusiastic 
agent. You wnll find that he has not only been solicited, 
but perhaps moved free of expense by the road ; that he has 
settled on railroad land, and possibly he is now building 
with railroad timber and plowing with a railroad plow. 
And he has usually thrived, you will find, under the paren- 
tal care of the road. He understands the bargain : he 
comes out and settles to-day, assisted by the road in his 
pioneer struggle; next year or the year after he will have 
grain or cattle to ship, and he wall buy sugar and coffee, 
which has paid toll to the road, and he will travel back and 
forth in the passenger-cars and induce his friends to join 
him. Thus the road proves its faith, justifies its prophecies, 
planting acorns for oaks to grow. 



140 The Progress of a United People 

So the road plays its part in all the wide activities of 
Western life. You will find it a vital power in politics, 
often sinister, often corrupting, always commanding. 
Here is an especially bright newspaper which supports 
with sober logic the pretensions of the road. Delve deep, 
and you will find the money of the road working in the 
editorial till. Here is a struggling church: the road has 
not only furnished the land for the new building, but its 
money has purchased the cabinet organ and the big Bible. 
This street carnival glitters more brightly because the road 
has been amiable; this water-power has been developed 
because the road took part of the stock; this library has 
more books because the first vice-president has been inter- 
ested. And so, mingling good and evil, the road pursues 
its commanding purposes — the development of an empire. 

And yet, great as is the power and prominence of the 
road in the West, it is itself only the instrument by which 
a mighty nation is making progress. The road was the 
effort of the East to knit to itself with steel the far-outlying 
Rockies and the Pacific coast. Without the road, the West 
and the East, diverse in interest and sentiment, never could 
have been held together. With the interchange of ideas 
and commodities which it encourages, the American people 
have been able to build up a great empire, holding together 
vast territory, firmly founded upon national unity. 



THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

By Its Manager, Melville E. Stone 

news-gathering as a business 

The business of news-gathering and 
news-pubhshing, as we know it, is 
wholly an American idea, having taken 
its rise in this country in the early years 
the last century. There were coffee- 
houses in London and New York, where the 
men had been accustomed to resort to ex- 
change the current gossip, and letters on 
important topics had occasionally been pub- 
lished; but before this time no systematic 
effort had been made to keep pace with the 
world's happenings. Then came the newspaper, supplant- 
ing the chapbook, the almanac, and the political pamphlet. 

In the new development half a dozen men were notable. 
Samuel Topliff and Harry Blake were the first newsmon- 
gers. Topliff established a '' news-room " in Boston, 
where he sold market reports and shipping intelligence ; and 
Blake was a journalistic Gaffer Hexam, who prowled 
about Boston harbor in his rowboat, intercepting incoming 
European packets, and peddling out as best he could any 
news that he secured. Both these men displayed zeal and 
intelligence, and both became famous in their day. 

Topliff and Blake were succeeded by D. H. Craig, who 

141 




<r^(SUs^i 



142 The Progress of a United People 

established himself as an independent news-collector and 
vender at Boston, and displayed extraordinary alertness. 
As the Cunard boats approached the harbor, Craig met them 
and received on his schooner a budget of news from the 
incoming vessel. Then by carrier-pigeons he communi- 
cated a synopsis of the news to his Boston office, frequently 
releasing the birds forty or fift}^ miles from port. 

Meanwhile Professor Morse was struggling with his in- 
vention of the magnetic telegraph. In 1838 he completed 
his machinery and took it to Washington on the invitation 
of President Van Buren ; but it was not until 1843 that 
Congress appropriated $30,000 to build an experimental 
line. It took a year to construct this between Washington 
and Baltimore, and it was not until the latter part of 1844 
that it proved of any service for the transmission of news. 

With the advent of the telegraph, Craig determined to 
make use of this novel agency in his business, but encoun- 
tered the hostility of those having a monopoly of Morse's 
patents, who desired to control the news business them- 
selves. There was a sharp contest. The New York papers 
joined forces with the telegraph people, and in 1848 organ- 
ized the Associated Press, with Mr. Hallock as president 
and Dr. Alexander Jones as manager. 

Its membership was limited to the proprietors of the six 
or seven New York dailies, and its purpose was to gather 
news for them only. Later, other newspapers in the in- 
terior arranged for exchanging news with it, and thus the 
enterprise developed into one of great importance. 

A hundred interesting stories are told of the experiences 
of Manager Jones. Because of the excessive cost of trans- 
mitting messages by the imperfect telegraph lines of that 
day, he devised a cipher, one word representing a sentence. 



The Associated Press 143 

Thus the word " dead " meant, in the congressional reports, 
" After some days' absence from indisposition, reappeared 
in his seat." When they desired to convey this informa- 
tion respecting Senator Davis of Massachusetts, they wired, 
" John Davis dead." But the word " dead " was not recog- 
nized as a cipher by the receiving operator, and all the 
papers of New York and Boston proceeded to print post- 
mortem eulogies, much to Davis's amusement. 

In the light of to-day, the following declaration published 
in 1852, is interesting: 

All idea of connecting Europe with America, by lines extending 
directly across the Atlantic, is utterly impracticable and absurd. 
It is found on land, when sending messages over a circuit of only 
four or five hundred miles, necessary to have relays of batteries 
and magnets to keep up or to renew the current and its action. 
How is this to be done in the ocean, for a distance of three thou- 
sand miles? But by the way of Behring's Strait the whole thing 
is practicable, and its ultimate accomplishment is only a question 
of time. 

As its name indicates The Associated Press is an organi- 
zation of newspapers for the purpose of gathering news on 
joint account. It is purely mutual in its character, and in 
this respect is unique. All of the other news-supplying 
agencies of the world are proprietary concerns. It issues 
no stock, makes no profit, and declares no dividends. It 
does not sell news to any one. It is a clearing-house for 
the interchange of news among its members only. Its 
membership consists of seven hundred daily newspapers 
published in the United States, each of which contributes to 
the common budget all news of national interest originating 
in Its vicinity, pays a weekly assessment representing its 
share of the general expense of conducting the business, and 



144 The Progress of a United People 

has its vote in the election of the management. The annual 
budget is divided thus : salaries — executive, editors, cor- 
respondents, operators, messengers, etc., $1,031,000; leased 
wires and telegraph tolls on outgoing matter, $704,000; 
tolls on incoming matter, special, etc., $152,000; foreign 
cables, $182,000; contracts with foreign agencies, $15,000; 
general expenses, including rents, telephones, type-writers, 
legal expenses, etc., $174,000; total, $2,258,000 (1905). 

To meet this, each member is assessed a sum which is paid 
weekly in advance. In making up these assessments, an 
equitable system is followed, which provides that the 
heaviest tax shall fall upon the larger papers. 

Three of these leased wires are operated between New 
York and Chicago at night and two by day. The volume 
of Associated Press report thus served daily to a morning 
newspaper in Philadelphia or Baltimore, through which 
cities the three night wires are extended, exceeds sixty 
thousand words, or forty ordinary columns. The telegraph 
operators are men of exceptional skill, and receive higher 
salaries than are paid by the telegraph or railway com- 
panies. To expedite their work, they use automatic send- 
ing-machines, which greatly exceed hand transmission in 
speed, and employ a system of abbreviations which can 
be sent with surprising rapidity. The receiving operators 
take the letters by sound and write them upon a type- 
writer, and since no one is able to manipulate a Morse key 
as swiftly as he can operate a type-writer, there is a con- 
stant effort to hasten the sending in order to keep pace 
with the ability of the receiver. 

Thus, with its alliances with the great foreign agencies 
covering every point of the habitable globe, with its own 
American representatives in every important foreign city. 



The Associated Press 145 

with special commissioners to report events of great mo- 
ment, with the correspondents and reporters of virtually all 
of the newspapers of the world laid under contribution, and 
with official recognition in a number of countries, the Asso- 
ciated Press is able to comb the earth for every happening 
of interest, and to present it to the newspaper reader with 
almost incredible speed. 



hr 



'^ ' cu /r % 



■' /)" ^ ^ ' 



The first telegraphic message. 



THE GROWTH OF THE UNITED STATES 
By Francis A. Walker 

Superintendent of Tenth Census 
THE UNITED STATES AT THE FIRST CENSUS. 

In 1790 the words United States designated a federal 
republic occupying seventeen degrees of latitude along the 
middle Atlantic coast of North America, and stretching 
westward to the Mississippi River from that entire ocean 
front, except that the St. Lawrence River and the Great 
Lakes formed its limit on the north. The tract thus 
bounded comprised about 820,000 square miles. 

The population of 1790 was 3,929,214, being about 4.9 
inhabitants to the square mile of the territory of that date. 

Six cities only, having a population of 8,000 or more, 
were in 1790 embraced within the limits described. 

The occupations of the people were mainly agriculture 
and the fisheries. Throughout the northern half of the 
country the soil was cultivated by the mass of citizens, and 
the land was held in small tracts. The men who tilled the 
soil were not a peasantry. They were the same sort of 
men, without distinction, as those who filled the learned 
professions or held the offices of state. At the South, 
however, a widely different condition of things existed : 
the actual cultivators of the soil were slaves, of a subject 
and degraded race; the land was held in large estates, and 

146 



The Growth of the United States 147 

a social aristocracy wielded great political power by virtue 
of wealth, birth, and education. 

THE UNITED STATES AT THE FOURTH CENSUS. 

Let us move forward thirty years, and contemplate the 
United States as they were found by the fourth census. 
A vast accession of territory has taken place. The Missis- 
sippi is no longer our western boundary. The Pacific now 
beats against the shores of the republic for the length of 
four hundred miles. The acquisition of Louisiana, by 
Jefferson, has brought under the flag all the country to 
the very base of the Rocky Mountains. 

The area of the United States is now about two millions 
of square miles, nearly equaling the extent of European 
Russia. Vast as has been the accession of territory, the 
increase of population has fully kept pace with it. The 
inhabitants nbw number 9,633,822, of whom more than 
two millions occupy the region west of the Appalachians. 

The 240,000 square miles of settled territory have 
grown to 509,000, of which nearly forty per cent, is found 
beyond the mountains, or in the far southwest, upon the 
newly acquired territory. The frontier line now includes 
Ogdensburg, Buffalo and Erie, Toledo and Detroit, Co- 
lumbus, Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Alton and St. Louis 
(whence a narrow tongue of settlement runs out to Jeffer- 
son City), Paducah, Chattanooga and Huntsville. From 
the last point the frontier line bends sharply back to pass 
around the country of the Cherokees, and curves outward 
again to compass the eastern half of Georgia. 

The increase of population in the thirty years has been 
mainly devoted to the occupation of new territory, and the 
density of settlement within the occupied area is now but 



148 The Progress of a United People 

18.9 to the square mile, against 16.4 in 1790. The six 
cities of 8,000 or more inhabitants at the earher date have 
now become thirteen. In 1820, one-twentieth only of the 
inhabitants of the United States resided in cities of the 
grade indicated. 

Agriculture still remains the predominant vocation, and 
is pursued in much the same spirit, and with much the same 
implements, as a generation before, except that, at the 
South, a Yankee school-master has invented a piece of ap- 
paratus by which millions of his countrymen are, through 
generations to come, to win their bread. '' Cotton is king," 
crowned by Eli Whitney. 

The habits of the people are still simple; wealth is still 
distributed in the hands of the many, except at the South, 
where the land is held in great estates ; luxury and state 
make a small appearance in the daily life of these still 
primitive communities. Even many years later, Mr. 
Webster could say of Massachusetts : " If there be a man 
in the State who maintains wdiat is called an equipage, 
has servants in livery, or drives four horses in his coach, 
I am not acquainted with him." 

THE UNITED STATES AT THE SEVENTH CENSUS. 

When the seventh census was taken, in 1850, another 
vast expansion of territory had just been effected. By the 
annexation of Texas, in 1845, about 375,000 square miles 
of Mexican territory had been added to the United States. 

The area of the United States was thus brought nearly 
up to 3,000,000 square miles. 

The population of 1850 was found to be 23,067,262, 
or about y.y to the square mile throughout our entire ter- 
ritory. Two-thirds of our then area was roamed over by 



The Growth of the United States 149 

Indians, or visited only by trappers, prospectors, or occa- 
sional mining, lumbering, and fishing parties. 

The frontier line of settlement, toward the west, in 1850, 
was drawn from Green Bay irregularly across Wisconsin 
and Iowa to Council Bluffs ; thence down the Missouri 
River to the boundary of the State of that name; thence, 
southward, the western limit of population was the western 
boundary of the States of Missouri and Arkansas, till the 
course of the Red River was reached, whence the line of 
population ran out two or three degrees to the west, and 
then turned south and southwest, taking in Austin and 
San Antonio, emerging on the Gulf at Corpus Christi. 

Beyond this frontier were isolated patches of settlement, 
upon the Great Plains, at Salt Lake City, and in the valleys 
of the Sacramento and San Joachim, then the scene of 
astonishing activity in the mining of gold. 

The change in the social conditions of the United States, 
so strikingly exhibited in the growth of urban popula- 
tions during the thirty years ending in 1850, is also shown 
in the statistics of industry and in the statistics of the 
occupations of the people, the latter class of facts having 
been, for the first time, collected in the seventh census. 

The United States has become a great manufacturing 
and mining nation. By the force of the remarkable me- 
chanical genius of our population, by virtue of the bounte- 
ous stores of raw materials at command, in the way of 
timber, fibers, ores, cheap food, and with a high degree 
of natural " protection " through the distance interposed 
between our markets and foreign nations, we have become, 
with how much of help or of hindrance from incoherent 
and often contradictory legislation it is not necessary to 
discuss here, predominantly an industrial and commercial. 



150 The Progress of a United People 

as distinguished from an agricultural, people. Less than 
one-half — only forty- four per cent, indeed — of the per- 
sons of all ages and both sexes engaged in gainful occu- 
pations were in 1850 employed in agriculture. 

THE UNITED STATES AT THE TENTH CENSUS (1880). 

The next thirty-years' period of the history of the United 
States witnessed no acquisition of territory which enters 
very importantly into an account of the national develop- 
ment. In 1853, Mexico ceded the country south of the 
River Gila, in New Mexico and Arizona, embracing a 
computed area of 45,000 square miles. 

In 1868, the United States purchased from Russia her 
possessions in North America, lying north of British 
America and extending to the Arctic Ocean. This vast 
region comprises a rudely computed area of 577,000 square 
miles. It remains (1880) in reality the Province, in name. 
the District, of Alaska. 

The period between 1850 and 1880 was marked by the 
astonishingly rapid spread of population over the vast 
region brought under the flag of the United States by the 
purchase of Louisiana, the annexation of Texas, and the 
cessions from Mexico. The 980,000 square miles of ter- 
ritory occupied by settlements in 1850 have become 1,570,- 
000. Of these, 384,820 have between 2 and 6 inhabitants 
to the square mile; 373,890 have between 6 and 18; 554,- 
300 between 18 and 45; 232,010 between 45 and 90; while 
24,550 have in excess of 90 inhabitants to the square mile. 
The population of the United States is now 50,155,783. 
The frontier line of settlement is, in general, the one- 
hundredth degree of longitude as far north as the forty- 



The Growth of the United States 151 

second parallel of latitude, and, thence northward, the 
ninety-ninth and afterward the ninety-eighth degree. 

The distribution of the population according to dominant 
topographical features may be thus stated : On the immedi- 
ate Atlantic coast, north, 2,616,892; middle, 4,375,184; 
south, 875,387; on the Gulf coast, 1,055,851; in the hilly 
and mountainous region of the northeast, 1,669,226; in 
the mountainous region of the central Atlantic slope, 
2,344,223; in the immediate region of the Lakes, 3,049,- 
470; on the table-lands and elevated plateaus of the in- 
terior, 5,716,326; in the south central mountainous region, 
2,695,085 ; in the Ohio Valley, 2,442,792 ; on the south 
interior table-lands and plateaus, 3,627,478; in the Missis- 
sippi belt, south, 710,268; north, 1,991,362; in the south- 
west central region, 2,932,807; in the central region, 
4,401,246; in the prairie region, 5,722,485; in the Missouri 
River belt, 835,455; on the western plains, 323,819; in 
the heavily timber region of the northwest, 1,122,337; in 
the Cordilleran region, 932,311; on the Pacific coast, 

715.789. 

Although the territory of the United States extends to 
the forty-ninth parallel, only one-tenth of the population 
is found north of the forty-third. But so dense is the set- 
tlement below this line, that, by the time the forty-first 
parallel is reached, about one-third of the population has 
been covered; the next single degree extends the propor- 
tion nearly to one-half, while more than two-thirds lie 
north of the thirty-eighth parallel. Between the forty- 
third and the thirty-eighth dwell 29,500,000 of our people. 
In 1870, 52.8 per cent, of the population w^as east of the 
eighty- fourth meridian. In 1880, only 49.4 per cent, was 
so placed, Eighty- four per cent, of the population is 



152 The Progress of a United People 

found east of the ninety-first meridian; 97 per cent, east 
of the ninety-seventh meridian. 

Of the population of the United States in 1880, 9,152,- 
296 Hved less than 100 feet above sea level; 10,776,284 at 
altitudes from 100 to 500 feet; a number almost equal to 
both the previous classes — viz., 19,024,320 — between 
1,000 and 1,500 feet; 1,878,715 between 1,500 and 2,000 
feet, leaving but 1,500,000 on all the higher altitudes. Of 
the latter, nearly 100,000 live more than 7,000 feet above 
the sea. The gain since 1870 has been pretty uniformly 
distributed as between the lowest three hypsometric groups, 
while the population at the higher altitudes has been dis- 
proportionately increased. 

The foreign elements of our population varied widely 
between 1850 and 1880. In 1850 foreigners constituted 
9.5 per cent, of the total population. In 1880 they consti- 
tuted 13.3 per cent. 

In 1880 the number of foreigners living among us was 
a little over 6,500,000, while the members of the colored 
race reached almost the same number. Speaking roundly, 
then, the following w^as the table of population : 

Whole number 50,000,000 

Foreigners 6,500,000 

Total native-born 43,500,000 

Colored 6,500,000 

Total native-born whites 37,000,000 

Having reference to the dominant topographical fea- 
tures of the country, we find that 93 per cent, of the colored 
population resided within the following regions: Middle 



The Growth of the United States 153 

Atlantic coast, 517,207; south Atlantic coast, 485,439; 
Gulf coast, 448,090; on the table-lands and elevated pla- 
teaus of the interior, 722,129; in the mountainous regions 
of the south central district, 432,318; on the southern in- 
terior table-lands and plateaus, 1,973,073; in the South 
Mississippi river belt, 458,004; in the southwest central 
region, 637,816; in the central district, 410,880. 

On the other hand, we find the foreign population much 
more liberally distributed, being represented fully in all 
the topographical divisions which were mentioned in con- 
nection with the aggregate population, except in the South. 



THE TWELFTH CENSUS 
(1900) 

By the Hon. W. R. Merriam 

Director of the Census 

Most of the ten thousand pages of the twelfth census 
are covered with figures for the States, counties, and towns 
of this vast country; and so great is the mass of detail 
presented that it is difficult to determine which are the 
most important facts, the most noteworthy results. The 
point of view varies, and no two men would select for men- 
tion the same topics. 

It is likely, however, that in .any consideration of the 
returns of the twelfth census the growth of population 
would be one of the first subjects to attract attention. 
The tendency toward aggregation in large cities, which is 
so characteristic of the present period, has an important 
bearing on social and economic conditions. The presence 
in our population of the negro and foreign elements in- 
volves serious problems, the solution of which requires 
the highest statesmanship. We have among us more than 
ten million foreigners and nearly nine million negroes. 

It is unfortunate that the quality of immigration is 
changing for the worse. The present industrial prosperity 
is attracting crowds of foreigners, many of them unfit for 
assimilation with our people and not in sympathy with our 

154 



The Twelfth Census 



155 



plan of government. This danger is serious enough to 
attract public attention, so that proper safeguards should 
be instituted for the protection of the standard of Ameri- 
can citizenship. " Americans, on guard ! " was the shibbo- 
leth of a political party forty or fifty years ago, and 
although no sensible man is now afraid that any foreign 




Diagram of the population by main geographic divisions. 

influence will obtain a strong foothold in our system of 
politics, the education and assimilation of the foreign ele- 
ment still continues of far-reaching importance. 

The total population enumerated by the twelfth census was 
76,303^387; but while the area of enumeration covered 
Alaska and Hawaii, it did not Include Porto Rico, the 
Philippines, Guam, or Samoa. The population of these 
newly acquired islands has, however, been ascertained, 
partly by estimates and partly by special censuses. Includ- 



156 The Progress of a United People 

ing these estimates, the total population of the United 
States and its outlying possessions in 1900 was as follows: 

Area of enumeration 76,303,387 

Philippine Islands 6,961,339 

Porto Rico 953-243 

Guam 9,000 

Samoa 6,100 



Total 84,233,069 



126 121 117 113 10» 1U5 lUl y7 93 89 SH 81 77 73 




105 101 



] LESS THAN 10% 
I l07oTO 25% 



25»/o TO 50% 
50% AND OVER 



Urban population : percentage of the total population living in towns of 
over 4000 inhabitants. 

The only countries surpassing the United States in num- 
ber of inhabitants are the Chinese Empire, the British 
Empire, the Russian Empire, and probably France, with 
the inclusion of its African possessions. 



The Twelfth Census 



157 



Notwithstanding the steady migration westward which 
has been in progress since the country was first settled, 
the great mass of the population is still located in the East. 
In 1900 the States along the Atlantic coast, which com- 
prise less than fifteen per cent, of the total area of the 
mainland of the United States, contained over forty per 
cent, of the total population; and the States east of the 
Mississippi, comprising less than thirty per cent, of the 
total area, contained over seventy per cent, of the total 




LESS THAN 5 % 



25% AND OVER 



Percentage of the foreign-born to the total population of the states and 

territories. 



population. Dividing the mainland of the United States 
into two equal parts, east and west, it is found that over 
ninety per cent, of the total population is located in the 
eastern half. 



158 The Progress of a United People 

If we take the Mississippi as the dividing-Hne between 
the East and the West, we find that 4,512,097 native 
Easterners have taken up their abode in the West, while 
the number of native Westerners Hving in the East is only 
518,543. The difference, 3,993,554, represents- the debt 
which the West owes the East in the interchange of native 
population. 

The proportion of the population living in cities has 
shown a marked increase at each successive census. In 
1790 the total population of the six cities having a popula- 
tion of over 8,000 each was only 131,472, or less than four 
per cent, of the total for the United States. In 1900 there 
were 545 places above the limit in size, and they comprised 
a population of 24,992,199, or thirty-three and one-tenth 
per cent, of the total population. It is noticeable, however, 
that the increase in the percentage of urban population 
was not nearly so great in the last decade as it was in the 
preceding one. 

STATISTICS OF ILLITERACY. 

The number of illiterates reported has not varied ma- 
terially in the last three censuses. It was 6,239,958 in 
1880, 6,324,702 in 1890, and 6,246,857 in 1900. Since, 
however, the total population has greatly increased from 
census to census, this nearly constant number represents a 
marked decrease in the percentages. 

In 1890 the area devoted to agriculture was 623,218,619 
acres; in 1900 it was 841,201,546 acres, showing an in- 
crease of 217,982,927 acres, or thirty-five per cent. This 
remarkable addition to farm acreage, far exceeding that 
shown in any previous decade, was mostly confined to the 
Central and Western States. A considerable part of it 



The Twelfth Census 1J9 

was due to the sale or leasing of State lands in Texas, 
and to the opening up for settlement of agricultural lands 
in Oklahoma and Indian Territory. Most of the grazing- 
land in Texas is still owned by the State, but, being leased 
to cattle- and sheep-raisers, was very properly reported in 
1900 as agricultural land. In this State alone the addi- 
tion to the acreage of farm-land exceeded 74,000,000 acres, 
accounting for one-third of the total increase shown for 
the country. In Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North 
Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and California, in- 
creases ranging from 7,000,000 to 14,000,000 acres each 
made up another third. All the States west of the Missis- 
sippi, except Arizona and Montana, added more than a 
million acres each to their agricultural areas. East of the 
Mississippi, the group of States north of the Ohio showed 
increases ranging from 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 acres each; 
but for the remaining States the only ones in which the in- 
crease exceeded 1,000,000 acres were Pennsylvania and 
Georgia. 

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the statistics of 
manufactures is the magnitude of the figures. The number 
of manufacturing establishments covered by the enumera- 
tion was 512,734. These establishments employed during 
the year, on the average, 5,321,389 wage-earners, paid out 
in wages $2,330,578,010, and produced goods having an 
aggregate value of $13,039,279,566. 



CIVIC IMPROVEMENT 
By Sylvester Baxter 

The wide-spread and growing interest in the develop- 
ment of civic beauty, in both its rural and its urban aspects, 
is shown in the numerous and varied instrumentalities 
now existing for such ends. This fact is full of promise; 
the country is manifestly at the dawn of a great civic 
awakening. Never before has there been such a general 
sense of the value of beauty in the life of a people; never 
before has there been such organization to that end. We 
may therefore with confidence look for a splendid fruitage 
from these efforts. 

In the first place, at the foundation of the movement, 
we have the local improvement associations. These repre- 
sent the organized voluntary effort that gives shape and 
strength to the impulse of individual initiative. On the 
other hand, embodying organized public activities, we have 
the park commissions of cities and towns, and in certain 
great cities, as in Boston and New York, art commissions 
to safeguard the functions of public adornment. Then in 
various leading cities there are active municipal art associa- 
tions engaged in the promotion of civic embellishment. 
Foremost among such bodies stands the Fairmount Park 
Art Association of Philadelphia, which has expended many 
hundreds of thousands of dollars in the beautifying of 
that city's parks and squares with monuments and sculpture 

1 60 



Civic Improvement l6l 

of the highest class. Again, in various cities, public works 
of the kind are promoted and kept in right directions by 
the activity and vigilance of various voluntary organiza- 
tions : municipal leagues, civic clubs, park and playground 
associations, etc. Bodies like these do invaluable service 
in organizing and influencing public sentiment to insist 
upon needed undertakings and to protect the public against 
encroachments upon and perversions of what has been 
achieved, so often threatened by selfish interests or by 
political corruption. Central Park in New York and the 
historic Common in Boston have been repeatedly saved 
from spoliation by timely efforts on the part of such as- 
sociations. 

As an instance of the enormous value of creative work 
set on foot in such w^ays may be cited a remarkable se- 
quence of activities that have been centered in Boston. A 
strong organization of lovers of nature, of sylvan ram- 
blings, and of mountain exploration, the Appalachian 
Mountain Club, responding to the pregnant suggestion of 
an individual member, instituted a movement for the 
preservation of beautiful and historic places that resulted 
in the organization of the Massachusetts Trustees of 
Public Reservations. If there is a beautiful or historic 
spot anywhere in Massachusetts that people may be in- 
terested in preserving for public enjoyment, it may be 
placed in the hands of this corporation for safe-keeping 
and proper administration, provided the necessary funds 
for maintenance accompany the gift. Numerous embodi- 
ments of beautiful natural scenery have in this way already 
been preserved for the perpetual enjoyment of the public. 

Moreover, the example thus set was acted upon in Eng- 
land by the organization of a similar society which has done 



i62 The Progress of a United People 

like service in preserving historic old buildings and beauti- 
ful spots in various parts of that country. Then this was 
soon followed by the organization, primarily for New 
York State, of a like association, which has grown into a 
body of national scope under the name of the American 
Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, which, besides 
acting as a public trustee for the administration of prop- 
erty of picturesque or historic interests, serves State or 
municipal governments as a custodian of public property 
set apart for scenic or historic purposes. A great value 
of this latter activity is that the society is entirely re- 
moved from the danger of political interference in the 
discharge of its duties. Another object of this society is 
to promote the beautification of cities and villages by the 
adornment of their open spaces and thoroughfares, the 
creation of new parks where desirable, the erection of his- 
torical memorials, and the bestowal of significant and ap- 
propriate names upon new thoroughfares, bridges, parks, 
reservoirs, and buildings. The society also conducts an 
educational propaganda through free lectures, correspond- 
ence, and the distribution of literature. Its record of 
work accomplished includes the purchase by New York 
State, at its instance, of thirty-three acres of the battle- 
field of Stony Point on the Hudson, committed to the 
custody of the society with an appropriation for its improve- 
ment; the purchase by the State of a tract of about thirty- 
five acres at the head of Lake George, the scene of notable 
events in the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars, 
and the principal scene for Cooper's novel " The Last of 
the Mohicans " ; causing the creation of the Interstate 
Park Commission for the preservation of the Palisades, 
with an appropriation of four hundred thousand dollars 



Civic Improvement 



163 



from the State of New York and fifty thousand dollars 
from the State of New Jersey to realize that purpose; in- 
ducing the embellishment of the surroundings of the an- 
cient church in Salem, New York ; and securing the pur- 
chase by the city of New York of the fine old colonial 
mansion where Washington lived in 1776. The society 
has also been active in the steps for preserving such his- 
toric monuments in New York city as Fraunces' Tavern, 




Surface drainage, the back bay fens, Boston. 

the home of Alexander Hamilton, and the cottage of 
Edgar Allan Poe, the Phillipse Manor Hall in Yonkers, 
the mansion of Sir Willian Johnson in Johnstown, and the 
ruins of the forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga. A 
feature of the society is the organization of a Women's 
Auxiliary, which has performed eiTective service. 

Again, in response to individual suggestion, the Trustees 
of Public Reservations, seeing the need of some public in- 
strumentality for securing, for public use and enjoyment, 
the reservation of important features in the landscape 



164 The Progress of a United People 

about Boston, set on foot a movement which resulted in 
the organization of the various Greater Boston munici- 
paHties into a metropohtan parks district, under a com- 
mission v^hich, in the course of the last eight years, with 
the greatest efficiency, has expended over twelve million 
dollars in the development of an already world-famous 
system of metropolitan parks. This system embraces many 
thousand acres of magnificent woodland, picturesque spots 
of rare beauty, many miles of ocean shore, the banks of 
three rivers, and the margins of beautiful lakes, as well 
as a series of parkways that unite all these varied features 
in a recreative network which has given permanent shape 
to the development of the New England metropolis along 
artistic and truly economic lines of civic growth. 

This magnificent object-lesson in consistent metropolitan 
development has exerted great influence elsewhere. It has 
caused the consideration of coherent schemes of improve- 
ment for various other American cities. The first prac- 
tical outcome was the adoption in New Jersey of the Essex 
County park scheme for the comprehensive improvement 
of Greater Newark along similar lines, with important 
parks and connecting parkways in that city and the ad- 
jacent municipalities in the same county. Responding to 
the same example, the City Parks Association of Phila- 
delphia has recently taken steps toward instituting a similar 
work for that city. The City Parks Association has been 
of invaluable public service in securing the establishment 
and improvement of numerous small parks and playgrounds 
in various parts of the city, and it has lately originated a 
strong movement toward preserving and developing, for 
recreative and sanitaiy purposes, the charms of natural 
features of the suburban landscape. The project now un- 



Civic Improvement 165 

der consideration is a magnificent one, involving the gir- 
dling of the city in its rural environment with a connected 
series of parks and parkways, particularly with reference 
to the banks of the several minor w^atercourses tributary 
to the Delaware and the Schuylkill. The scheme is well 
within the bounds of practicability, and would be of im- 
mense hygienic value. Some of these watercourses are 
becoming so defiled through the character of neighboring 
developments that they are not only nuisances in their 
more immediate neighborhoods, but are endangering the 
health of the great city by the pollution of its water-supply 
from the Schuylkill River. The proposed improvement 
would convert them into features of great and enduring 
beauty as rural and aquatic pleasure-grounds for the sur- 
rounding populations, and as essential elements in a long 
succession of connected parks and pleasure-ways, while it 
would avert all danger both from local nuisances generated 
by noisome swamps and unclean waters, and from water- 
supply pollution. 

The lesson of these vast results, spreading throughout 
the country, that have proceeded from the initiative of 
two persons, lovers of art and nature, and. possessed of 
what may be called the faculty of civic constructiveness, is 
full of encouragement for all friends of progress in these 
directions. Therefore, let any one be duly impressed with 
the desirability of some improvement for the community 
where he lives, and the way can be found to give it op- 
portunity. Moreover, it will mean not only the doing of 
that one good thing, but the doing of many other good 
things that otherwise would remain undone — good things 
in that place and in many other places, perhaps from 
world's end to world's end. 



i66 The Progress of a United People 

Where there is a will for civic improvement, it ought 
not to be difficult to find the way to carry it into effect. 
Suppose an activa-minded and public-spirited person in 
some village is impressed with the desirability of carrying 
out such a work there. There is probably a women's club, 
which might be induced to organize a local improvement 
section, to cooperate, perhaps, with an improvement society, 
when established. Then, by joining the Women's Auxil- 
iary of the American Park and Outdoor Art Association, 
the experience and accumulated information of that organi- 
zation could easily be made available, and by communicating 
with the League for Social Service the best way to organize 
an improvement society could be ascertained. Another 
slight expenditure for membership in that body would make 
it possible to interest the public and give a good idea of 
possible results by obtaining the use of the league's rich 
collection of lantern-slides and other illustrative material. 
If it is desired to give to the public some beautiful or pic- 
turesque spot for a pleasure-ground, or a piece of property 
to be improved and cared for as a local park, playground, 
or public garden, should the local authorities either decline 
to assume charge or be deemed of a character undesirable 
for a responsibility of the kind, or should there be no local 
improvement society to take charge, then the property 
might be given into the keeping of the Trustees of Public 
Reservations, should it happen to be in Massachusetts. If 
anywhere else in New England, the Appalachian Mountain 
Club would probably be willing to undertake the trust. Or, 
tmder like conditions, the American Scenic and Historic 
Preservation Society of New York would doubtless per- 
form the office of any place In the country at large. It 
might be considered that, to take advantage of such Instru- 



Civic Improvement 167 

mentalities, located perhaps hundreds or thousands of miles 
away, would be to place administrative control in hands 
too remote to deal properly with the specific requirements 
of the case. It is, however, the practice of these organiza- 
tions, upon accepting a given property in trust, — the gift 
necessarily accompanied by funds sufficient to assure proper 
care and maintenance, — to place it in charge of some suita- 
ble agent on the spot. In this way local conditions are 
easily met. 

Local improvement societies may properly have charge 
not only of public grounds secured by their own effort or 
purchased expressly to be given into their hands : it may 
often be the case that such grounds belonging to a village, 
town, or city, in its municipal capacity can best be cared 
for by such organizations. 

In the choice of things to do it is well to follow the line 
of the least resistance — that is, consider what most needs 
to be done; and where several things present themselves, 
do those that can be done most easily and effectively, and 
do them in the best possible way. Let local circumstances 
be studied carefully and intelligently, and let the improve- 
ments entered upon be undertaken in accord therewith. If 
practicable, let the conditions of the place be submitted to 
competent expert authority; the cost will not be excessive, 
and the advice given will be well worth the while. Should 
a visit from such an authority not be feasible, much might 
be gained from correspondence. It is very important to 
know how to go to work. To proceed planlessly, without 
a definite purpose, in such things is expensive and short- 
sighted. The best of good taste, so far as capacity for ap- 
preciating a good thing goes, can seldom accomplish an 
admirable result if creative work be undertaken without 



i68 The Progress of a United People 

training or experience. Therefore it is not sufficient to un- 
derstand what should be done : the knowledge of how best 
to do it is of equal importance. 

For instance, are the town streets or the country high- 
ways deficient in shade-trees? Is there a lack of play- 
grounds or of local breathing-spaces ? Are the public monu- 
ments or decorative features in good taste? If not, how 
can the public sense of the community best be awakened 
to an appreciation of genuine good taste? Is the place 
one of a rural type, or is it a factory village of growing 
importance and assuming a densely settled and urban char- 
acter? Questions like these are of prime importance. 
Again, what are the geographical and climatic characteris- 
tics? Is the place on the coast; on a river; in a woodland 
region, with rolling hills ; on the prairies or plains ; or amid 
high mountains? In each of these cases the problems are 
apt to be radically different, and a form of improvement 
admirably adapted to one place would be wholly out of 
keeping if applied to another. 

The fullest possible advantage should be taken of the 
opportunities presented by topographical character. By 
giving due weight to this circumstance the most effective, 
most appropriate, and most economical results can be 
reached, and the maximum in the way of public benefit 
and popular enjoyment. If a town lies near the sea, for 
instance, then the sea is usually the great factor in the 
scenery, and the main efforts at improvement should be 
concentrated upon the sea-shore. It would be manifestly 
out of keeping, in such a situation, for the community to 
turn its back to the sea and by preference give its attention 
to the development of some feature on the inland side, 
where the character of the scenery would be commonplace 



Civic Improvement 169 

in comparison. Yet this is precisely what is often done; 
the great and dominant feature of the site is apt to be 
sHghtly regarded, perhaps because of its very familiarity. 
Hence what is essentially the most precious possession of 
the community in its possibilities for administering to pub- 
lic enjoyment is not infrequently held in low esteem. The 
water-front of a town, which might easily be made the 
most beautiful feature of it, is therefore often the most 
disagreeable and squalid section, given up to slums and 
nuisance-breeding forms of occupation. In a seaport, of 
course, the needs of commerce must be held in prime re- 
gard, and these are largely of a sort that often precludes rec- 
reative uses, while manufacturing establishments, railway 
terminals, mercantile demands, etc., by good right have 
the first claim for consideration. In turn, however, these 
call for large industrial populations about them, and their 
higher needs must be looked after. Hence enlightened 
civic polities tend to the development of a water-front both 
industrially and recreatively. In a large city we therefore 
may see local pleasure-grounds and recreation-piers inter- 
spersed among the docks, the warehouses, and the factories. 
Fortunately, moreover, the character of the water-front of 
a port is commonly such as to invite both forms of develop- 
ment, from the fact that beside the deep-water shore-line 
there are usually considerable reaches of shoals that dis- 
courage commercial occupancy and are preeminently adapted 
to recreative uses. The popular enjoyment of such places 
is heightened by the fact that the movements of commerce 
near by are essentially picturescpe of aspect, presenting an 
ever-changing spectacle that exerts an unwearying charm. 
The neighborhood of the sea is a priceless possession for 
any community, and the circumstance should be made much 



lyo The Progress of a United People 

of. The sea-shore is a great attraction all through the 
summer. No seaside village is too humble to cherish most 
jealously its rights to the shore, or to prevent its passing 
into private possession, whether for summer residences, 
for hotels, or for privately owned recreation-grounds. At 
least one goodly strip of sea-beach, either on a bay or cove 
or on the open ocean, should be secured as public property, 
for use as a promenade, for bathing, and for a public land- 
ing-place. 

The same argument holds good in regard to rivers. The 
river-fronts of towns, as a rule, are more abused than sea- 
fronts. While the river itself is customarily a popular 
resort for summer pleasuring, its value as a source of en- 
joyment is diminished by the habitual disposition of the 
entire community to turn its back upon what should be paid 
the highest respect. The riverside should be invested with 
the beauty that by right belongs there, and that well repays 
its guarding, instead of being devoted to back yards, out- 
houses, the unsightliest rear ends of buildings, and de- 
graded into a dumping-ground for all sorts of refuse. 

Whatever is the most characteristic element in the scenery 
of a place should stand first in the scheme of recreative open 
spaces. If there is a river, let there be an esplanade, a 
terrace, a promenade, or a drive, treated either formally or 
in naturalistic style, as circumstances may suggest. If 
there is a lake, let there be a lakeside pleasure-ground. If 
the region is a rolling country, let a charming valley scene 
be secured, with care to include some sightly point of view. 
If a town is spread upon the flat prairie, as so many hun- 
dreds are in the Middle West, let its people not despair of 
opportunity to vary what may seem a hopeless monotony in 
environment. The prairie itself may be made the motive 



Civic Improvement 171 

for a charming landscape. A spacious expanse of level 
verdure may be inclosed in bosky margins, like a bay with 
sylvan shores ; on the far side a vista may open out into the 
wide rural country, with horizon even, low, and remote, and 
as restful as the ocean in its sense of breadth and peace. If 
it is a factory town with water-power, then above the dam 
the stream will have a considerable reach of slack water that 
invites boating and other aquatic pleasuring. As a rule, 
the banks of such a piece of water can readily be cleared of 
the ugly intrusions that are apt to possess a neighborhood 
of the sort; they can easily be made to clothe themselves 
with vegetation, and soon resume a natural appearance. A 
delightful popular pleasure-ground may thus be created. If 
the location is on the arid plains of the Far West, then the 
irrigation-ditches of the neighborhood can be utilized to 
help create a public pleasure-ground, with attractive canal- 
like or stream-like features, feeding picturesque ponds or 
lagoons, the beauty of which would be doubly appreciated 
in an environment where the sight of water is uncommonly 
precious. 

A charming example of a lakeside improvement is of- 
fered by the Massachusetts town of Wakefield. Near the 
center lies Lake Ouannapowitt, a beautiful piece of water 
more than a mile long. This supplied the motive for ex- 
tending the old common to the lake, ending in a beautiful 
broad water vista framed in a characteristic rolling New 
England landscape. On one side of the lake the main 
highway runs the entire length of it, with a strip of public 
ground on the waterside and landings here and there. A 
street-railway also offers a delightful trolley excursion. 
The lake has enriched the recreative life of the town with 
the aquatic pleasuring that it invites, and its opportunities 



172 The Progress of a United People 

for canoeing, rowing, sailing, and excursions in motor- 
launches have been correspondingly developed. 

In the town of Winchester, another Boston suburb, is 
found a charming combination of advantages. As a de- 
velopment of natural opportunities, the results shown here 
are positively ideal. In the first place, Winchester offers 
an unsurpassed example of the appreciation by a com- 
munity of the value of agreeable and beautiful approaches 
for producing pleasing first impressions upon those 
entering or passing through the place. The town 
occupies a valley between wooded hills. A little river flows 
through it, and expands into a chain of lakes below. The 
town common adjoins the main railway-station of a great 
trunk-line. Bordering the common is the local business 
center, with a class of buildings unusually tasteful and 
expressive. The railway from the Boston direction passes 
beside the river, and the effect of its tranquil scenery, fol- 
lowed by that of the well-kept common at the station, has 
always made an agreeable impression upon travelers by 
rail. A few years ago a great metropolitan parkway was 
laid out beside the lakes below and along the river through 
the town, to give approach to a public reservation of three 
thousand acres of wooded hills and sylvan lakes on the 
easterly side of the Mystic Valley — the Middlesex Fells. 
To assure the greatest possible benefit from this improve- 
ment, the town contributed liberally toward taking the 
river-banks for the parkway, and also for removing the 
railway freight-yards and an unsightly tannery. This gave 
a large additional open space near the railway-station, and 
the site was utilized for a fine public playground, named 
the Manchester Playstead, in honor of a beloved citizen, 
and as the most appropriate memorial to him. 



Civic Improvement 



173 



CIVIC IMPROVEMENT IN STREET AND HIGHWAY. 

One of the most common forms of civic improvement — 
the form that has most widely engaged pubHc attention and 
has been attended with the best results — is the improved 
construction of roads in country and town, and the suitable 
adornment of the latter class of highway. 




m 



^^' 



'jfmntll^^ 


nf 




"^^^h^ 




f>?^'- 



Beautiful type of rural highway. 



174 The Progress of a United People 

The elements for an attractive street are very simple. 
After properly constructed road-bed and sidewalks come 
shade-trees. These should be all of the same kind on one 
street, or at least on one block of a street. Otherwise the 
effect will be broken, ragged and discordant. Wherever 
practicable, the trees should stand in a margin of turf be- 
tween the sidewalk and the road. If the street is extremely 
broad, this turfed space can be made an ample belt of ver- 
dure. If, on the other hand, the street is a narrow one, 
and particularly if the fronts of the houses are on the line 
of the sidewalk, the mistake of planting trees that grow 
high should not be made. For, wdiile the lofty vault of the 
trees may give beauty to the street itself, the dense foliage 
will be harmful to health by excluding needed light and the 
free movement of fresh air from the houses. On narrow 
streets, therefore, trees of low-growing habit are desirable. 
By planting them at frequent intervals they may be made 
to shade the walks sufficiently, and at the same time they 
will not deprive the adjacent dwellings of needed light and 
air. As a rule, shade-trees are undesirable for urban busi- 
ness thoroughfares, unless the streets are particularly broad. 
In the latter event, trees naturally of small size, trimmed in 
formal shapes, perhaps, may serve an admirable decorative 
function as adjuncts to good mercantile and civic architec- 
ture, and also for mitigating the depressing effects of 
mean construction. 

A narrow residential street may be a very attractive one 
if the houses stand well back from the street-line, with 
pleasant grounds about them. In a growing town, however, 
the danger from such conditions comes with the liability to 
convert the street to business purposes, or to erect more 
compactly disposed dwellings. If business comes in, the 



Civic Improvement 175 

transition is commonly marked by jagged lines. Com- 
mercial structures, often of a cheap and undesirable aspect, 
are built out to the street, while the dwellings stand re- 
cessed back at irregular intervals. And when at last the 
street is fully occupied for business purposes, it is alto- 
gether too narrow; the roadway and the sidewalks are 
cramped, and often a widening has to take place at the 
public expense. If built up closely to the line with dwell- 
ings, the street is likely to lack air and sunshine, and the 
tendency is toward squalid conditions. 

An excellent remedy for these evils is offered in the 
Massachusetts law that empowers municipalities to establish 
building-lines at any desired distance back from the street- 
line. When such a line is established, no buildings can be 
erected on the intervening space. The municipality ac- 
quires an easement in this strip of land, which can still be 
used by the owner for anything but building purposes, and, 
on the establishment of such a line, owners may claim 
damages, as in case of takings for 'a street-widening. It 
is, however, commonly more of a benefit than a damage to 
have property thus restricted, for it assures a more perma- 
nently desirable character to the street; and in case a street- 
widening should ever be called for, no obstacle will stand 
in the way: by taking the restricted strips, there will be 
ample room for the wider roadway and sidewalks. 

Ideals for attractive street-planning are to be found in 
many parts of the United States. There is nothing more 
charming as a rural street than that of a New England 
village at its best — lofty aisles of leafage, the trees with 
feet in a carpet of turf at the sidewalk border; the houses, 
quiet and unobtrusive, standing well back, and marked 
with the true home character, whether they are humble 



176 The Progress of a United People 




Magnolia Avenue at Riverside, California. An example of formal 

planting. 



cottages or abodes of the rich. The noblest development of 
such rural streets is to be found in the old towns of the 
Connecticut valley and in western Massachusetts. There 
the main highways have an extraordinarily generous width, 
often giving room for quadruple rows of old elms and broad 
spaces of turf, the roadway requiring only a narrow space 
in the total width of the thoroughfare. 

The beauty of such streets goes far to compensate for the 
too prosaic aspect of our typical wooden country houses, 
conferring upon the New England villages of the best type 
a picturesque charm that bears comparison with that of 
English villages, though of a quite different fashion. In 
this way there is probably nothing finer than the celebrated 
street of the Connecticut-valley town appropriately named 
Long Meadow. Long Meadow Street, as it is called, is 
bordered by almost the whole of the township's main village, 
which extends along the grassy interval of the great river, 



Civic Improvement 177 

shaded by hundreds of the typical elms which in that valley 
are found in their highest perfection. Beneath one of the 
double naves of natural Gothic the electric cars now speed 
their way, and hundreds of long-distance trolley tourists 
have spread the fame of this street far and wide as one of 
the great sights of the Connecticut-valley trip. Such 
streets seem to grow, rather than to be made ; they require 
age to perfect the ensemble of lofty elms and venerable 
houses that together stand for many decades of existence. 
But even these stately old ways were once new, and equal 
effects may now be planned. To all good highway develop- 
ment the mellowing touch of time will give its justifying 
charm. 

There are certain great streets in various American 
cities famous as typical examples of civic beauty and stateli- 
ness. In spreading the gospel of civic improvement such 
object-lessons have the greatest value. What one com- 
munity has done surpassingly well other communities will 
seek to do. Hence, these great streets serve as models that, 
with due modifications according to local circumstance, 
have been widely followed elsewhere. One of the fore- 
most of them is Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, with its 
central reserved space for trees, turf, and monumental 
adornment, and its breadth of two hundred and forty feet 
between building-lines. Another famous thoroughfare of 
the residential type, urban and suburban in character, is 
Euclid Avenue in Cleveland. A celebrated illustration of 
the possibilities of stately development under semi-tropical 
conditions is Magnolia Avenue at Riverside in southern 
California, adorned with pepper-trees and palms, extending 
for miles through orange-plantations and bordered by 
pleasant residences. 



lyS The Progress of a United People 

To promote and preserve the charm of the typical coun- 
try road, as well as to beautify the formal city or village 
street, should be one of the chief aims in civic improve- 
ment. An example of a country road of ideal beauty is to 
be found in the Greater Boston municipalities of Medford 
and Winchester. A historic old colonial estate of some 
hundreds of acres is still owned by the descendants of the 
original proprietor, who in stately fashion maintained his 
country-seat there. 

A most admirable example is that set by the seaside town 
of Manchester, on Cape Ann. One of the town's great 
charms for its wealthy summer dwellers is the beauty of the 
drive through the Essex woods. Well-grown woods have 
their value for timber and fuel, however. So, to for fend 
all danger of wayside spoliation, the entire belt of wood- 
land traversed by the road, in a width just sufficient to pre- 
serve the integrity of the forest border, was purchased by 
subscription, and presented to the town for permanent 
preservation as a part of its park system. An area of 
seven acres, thus secured, was equivalent to a long roadside 
stretch of sylvan scenery. The example of Manchester has 
been followed by the Cape Cod town of Yarmouth, which 
for like purposes has secured a long belt of land bordering 
a pleasant drive through the woods. 



PEACE VERSUS WAR 

By Andrew Carnegie 

Long and earnestly have the teachers of men sought reHef 
from international war, which has drawn from the most 
illustrious such fierce denunciation as no other crime has 
evoked — perhaps not all the other national crimes com- 
bined. Surely no civilized community in our day can resist 
the conclusion that the killing of man by man as a means of 
settling international disputes is the foulest blot upon hu- 
man society and the greatest curse of human life, and that 
as long as men continue thus to kill one another they have 
slight claim to rank as civilized, since in this respect they 
remain savages. The crime of war is inherent : it awards 
victory not to the nation that is right but to that which is 
strong. 

In man's triumphant upward march he has outgrown 
many savage habits. He no longer eats his fellows, or buys 
and sells them, or sacrifices prisoners of war, or puts van- 
quished garrisons to the sword, or confiscates private 
property, poisons wells, or sacks cities. No more 

... the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard at heart, 
In liberty of bloody hand shall range 
With conscience wide as hell 

All these changes in the rules of war have been made from 
time to time as our race rose from the savage state toward 

179 



i8o The Progress of a United People 

civilization. They are chiefly the good fruits of the last 
century, for even Wellington sacked cities. 

If all civilized people now regard these former atrocities 
of war as disgraceful to humanity, how long will it be be- 
fore their successors will regard the root of these barbari- 
ties, war itself, as unworthy of civilized men, and discard 
it ? We are marching fast to that day through the reign of 
law under which civilized people are compelled to live. No 
citizen of a civilized nation is permitted to-day to wage war 
against his fellow-citizen or to redress his own wrongs, real 
or fancied. Even if insulted, he can legally use force only 
sufficient to protect himself; then the law steps in, and ad- 
ministers punishment to the aggressor based upon evidence. 
Hence, if a citizen attempts to sit as judge in his own cause 
or to redress his wrongs in case of dispute with another, he 
breaks the law. Now, nations being only aggregations of 
individuals, why should they be permitted to wage war 
against other nations, when, if all were classed as citizens 
of one nation, they would be denied this right of war and 
would have to subject themselves to the reign of law? Not 
long can this continue to commend itself to the judgment of 
intelligent men. Consider our own republic, with an area 
little smaller than that of Europe, within whose wide borders 
war is impossible, every citizen being honorably bound to 
keep the peace and submit to the courts of law, which alone 
administer judgment in cases of dispute, and contrast it 
with Europe, an armed camp — armed not against distant 
foreign enemies upon other continents, but against itself. 

Under present rules of war, there are in Europe as many 
possible centers of war as there are nations on that Conti- 
nent. We have forty-six nations called States, yet there is 
not one center of war. Resort to force would be rebellion. 



Peace Versus War 18 1 

This unity, which insures freedom from danger of internal 
war and free exchange of products, is fast making our 
Union the foremost power of the world. Our wealth al- 
ready exceeds that of any other nation, our population is 
exceeded only by that of Russia or China or India; our 
manufactures exceed in value $17,000,000,000, said to ex- 
ceed those of Great Britain and Germany combined. At 
the present rate of increase, our population, and hence our 
military strength, will soon equal that of both. The last 
census (1900) gave over 16,000,000 males of militia age. 

In considering the problem, let it be noted that it is no 
longer actual war itself which the world in our day has 
most to dread. This is not our greatest curse. It is the 
'' ever-present danger of war " which hangs over the world 
like a pall and which we have to dispel. Men are now born 
*and die, their country's peace unbroken, but in scarcely a 
year of their lives is it not endangered, and not a day can 
pass which is not disturbed by the fearful note of *' prepara- 
tion for war " throughout the world, which some writers 
still venture to recommend even in editorial columns as the 
best preventive of war. On the contrary preparation by 
one nation compels rival preparation by others, each hon- 
estly protesting that only protection, not attack, is desired, 
the inevitable result being, however, that mutual suspicion 
is aroused, and as each vies with the other in fearful prep- 
aration, national hatreds develop, and only a spark is then 
needed to kindle the torch of w^ar. Partial disarmament 
would make the difference between two quarreling neigh- 
bors, each having only two pistols instead of three, the 
danger of war between them remaining as great as before. 

It is not what bearings a question at issue between nations 
may have upon the countries of the respective disputants 



l82 The Progress of a United People 

which is of first importance in determining the result of 
peace or war; it is in what spirit friendly, or unfriendly, 
negotiations are entered upon. Disputes that would be 
easily settled between friendly nations become the basis of 
war when international jealousies exist. An illustration of 
this vital truth is the incident upon the Dogger Bank, which 
recently excited Great Britain and Russia. It was promptly 
settled; but if the parties had been Great Britain and Ger- 
many, it would in all probability have led to war, so readily 
does rival preparation provide the inflammable material upon 
which war feeds. The insuperable objection to " prepara- 
tion " by the first nation is that it inevitably leads to the 
building of competing armaments by powers which other- 
wise would not have increased them, thus spreading the 
area of war, and making more nations possible enemies. 
Hence the most prolific mother of war in our day, is " prep- 
aration," as '' territorial aggrandizement " has been until 
recently. 

There is one important feature of our time which has 
to be most carefully considered — every ruler, statesman, 
and ambassador of every country repeatedly protests that 
their armaments are for protection only; that their country 
seeks not territorial additions, that its first and last desire is 
peace as the greatest blessing. In all this they are beyond 
question sincere. Among civilized lands to-day there are 
not good peaceable members and bad warlike members ; all 
really desire peace and their armaments are intended to be 
protective instruments only. Why then is peace not se- 
cured? The answer is that the leaders of nations at their 
respective capitals are strangers to each other and com- 
municate only through ambassadors ; they do not trust each 
other; each suspects sinister designs in the other, and. 



Peace Versus War 183 

fearful of offending public opinion so easily excited upon 
international issues, they hesitate to adopt broad peaceful 
measures of common justice, or to agree to arbitration 
which might decide against their country. Under present 
world conditions, if the makers of treaties knew and trusted 
each other, war would soon become obsolete, for it is an in- 
dubitable fact that the reign of peace would be most ad- 
vantageous for all nations. To every nation war would 
be a calamity. Let us rid ourselves of thinking that there 
are good nations who abhor war and bad nations who lie 
in wait for an opportunity to attack the weak. In our day 
the peaceful development of nations is their most profitable 
policy. Assuming that all civilized nations long for peace, 
if one or more of the chief powers were to approach the 
others in the proper spirit, a league of peace would seem 
highly probable. 

The world, once so unknown, with ports so distant, has 
now shrunk into a neighborhood, in constant and instan- 
taneous communication, international exchanges reaching 
the enormous sum of $28,000,000,000 per year. It stands 
to reason, therefore, that under these changed conditions 
no one or two nations should be permitted to disturb the 
world's peace, in which other nations have a common in- 
terest and upon w^hich they are more or less dependent. 
Nations are partners to-day in this world-business, and 
have a right to be consulted in all matters pertaining to the 
world's peace. They are rapidly becoming interdependent, 
and international courts must of necessity soon be estab- 
lished. We have the germ of these already in the world 
marine court recently agreed upon in London by the dele- 
gates of the eight naval powers, Austria-Hungary, Great 
Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy, and the 



184 The Progress of a United People 

United States. This tribunal, composed of one judge from 
each land, is to pass final judgment upon all questions within 
its sphere. It is this pioneer of other world courts to come 
which our Secretary of State has wisely suggested should 
become an arbitral court, empowered to consider all dis- 
putes referred to them by the nations. If the powers agree 
to his admirable suggestion, the world will soon have an 
international court composed of the foremost of the world's 
jurists, ready to pass judgment upon any international dis- 
pute that may be submitted. Thus the world does move 
steadily toward peace and brotherhood. 

Peaceful arbitration has so far been the chief agent of 
progress toward the reign of peace and can be credited with 
having already settled nearly six hundred international dis- 
putes. Secretary Root has broken all records by negotiating 
twenty-four of these settlements, and for this and other 
important services he deserves high place among the workers 
for international peace. Such treaties are not to be judged 
solely by their provisions. These to which we have re- 
ferred are limited to certain subjects, exclusive of others, 
but the average citizen knows little of treaty contents, and 
hence the mere fact that his country has agreed with an- 
other to settle some issues peacefully inspires friendly feel- 
ings which may some day count for much. Again, states- 
men, knowing that their respective countries have agreed 
to settle some kinds of disputes peaceably, are predisposed 
to follow that mode for the settlement of others; therefore 
all treaties, whatever their limitations, make for peace. 
But arbitration of international disputes has so far encoun- 
tered a serious obstacle : nations have been and still are in- 
disposed to submit all disputes to arbitration. Although 
Belgium and Holland, Chili and the Argentine, Norway 



Peace Versus War 185 

and Sweden, have done so, one or more exceptions are al- 
ways made by the chief nations, and these are fatal to the 
one indispensable change required — the removal of the 
danger of zvar, without which nothing vital is gained. 

Many devoted disciples of peace were seriously studying 
this feature of the problem when the solution came unex- 
pectedly in a flash of inspiration from no less a ruler than 
President Taft, that revealed the true path to the realization 
of peace on earth. Here is the inspired deliverance before 
the Peace and Arbitration Society in New York on the 22d 
of March, 19 10, which we believe will remain memorable 
for untold ages, and give the author rank among the im- 
mortals as one of the foremost benefactors of his race: 

Personally I do not see any more reason why matters of na- 
tional honor should not be referred to a court of arbitration than 
matters of property or of national proprietorship. I know that 
is going further than most men are willing to go, but I do not 
see why questions of honor may not be submitted to a tribunal 
composed of men of honor who understand questions of national 
honor, to abide by their decision, as well as any other question 
of difference arising between nations. 

In these few words President Taft becomes the leader 
of the holy crusade against man killing man in war, as 
Lincoln became the leader in the crusade against the selling 
of man by man. Much to the dismay of mere party 
politicians, Lincoln went to the root of the cause of slavery, 
declaring that a nation could not endure permanently half 
slave and half free. Our leader of to-day declares it the 
duty of nations to refer to a court of honor all questions 
tliought to affect their honor, as wtW as any other questions 
arising between them. Thus nations cannot sit as judges in 



i86 The Progress of a United People 

their own causes, for this would violate the first principles 
of natural justice, as is shown by the fact that in our day a 
judge known to have sat in judgment in a cause in which he 
was even in the smallest degree personally interested, would 
die in infamy. So will nations sink into infamy which 
insist much longer upon trampling under foot this benign 
rule of law. Courts of honor such as suggested by the 
president are coming rapidly into favor in countries which 
still tolerate the duel. The German Emperor especially is 
reputed to have done much to introduce these and hence 
to restrict dueling. 

It is quite true that the President, as he says, " goes 
further than most men are willing to go " ; otherwise he 
would not be a leader; for a leader's place is in the front. 
But — and this is another characteristic of the truly great 
leader — he goes no further than is absolutely necessary. 
Had he exempted any one subject, even "honor" from 
arbitration, — although no nation can dishonor another 
nation, and no man dishonor another man, all honor's 
wounds being self-inflicted, — he would have failed to 
bridge the chasm betzi^een peace and the danger of zvar, and 
little would have been gained. Armaments would continue 
to swell as at present, increasing suspicion, jealousy, and 
hatred between the powers until w^ar broke forth as the 
natural result of " mutual preparation," which from its 
very nature creates what it so vainly hopes to prevent. 

When the final step is taken and the representatives of 
the nations assemble to organize the International Court, to 
which they agree to submit all disputes, it may be assumed 
that they will specify as a fundamental principle that the in- 
dependence of nations and their existing territorial rights 
shall be recognized and upheld as an integral part of the 



Peace Versus War 187 

organization. Hence no disputes could arise affecting 
either of these subjects. Thus would be eliminated the 
chief source of serious disputes, those affecting the honor 
or vital interests of nations. 

Let all friends of peace hail President Taft as our leader, 
rejoicing that he has found the true solution of the problem 
and placed our country in the van in the holy crusade for 
international peace, an honor to which it is fairly entitled 
as the foremost exponent and upholder of the rights of 
man, or, as the poet Burns put it in Revolutionary days, 

Columbia's offspring, brave and free, 
Ye know and dare proclaim 
The royalty of man. 

Well do the intelligent masses of Europe and of our 
Southern republics know and appreciate the mission of this 
Republic in drawing all ranks and classes together in the 
bonds of brotherhood. Her representatives will not lack 
support in these lands nor in Canada when they urge that 
all international disputes shall be arbitrated that the world's 
peace may remain unbroken. 



THREE WARS PREVENTED 

{From the New York Evening Sun, May, 19 ii.) 

Baltimore, May 4, 191 1. — Huntington Wilson, As- 
sistant Secretary of State, opened to-day's session of the 
Third National Peace Congress, which is in session here, 
with a short address explaining how the present policies 
of the State Department tend to advance the general world- 
wide movement for peace. He discussed the relation be- 
tween the so-called *' Dollar Diplomacy," which he con- 
tended had the effect of promoting peaceful relations with 
foreign governments through the development of closer 
trade and commercial bonds. He cited the present arbitra- 
tion treaty which is now in process of negotiation between 
the United States and Great Britain as a tangible result of 
the present policy of the United States Government. 
When completed and ratified by the Senate, he added, all 
future disputes between the United States and Great Britain 
will be settled by arbitration. 

" Those who work in the Department of State and for- 
eign service," Mr. Wilson said, " ordinarily do not talk 
much of peace except when war threatens some other coun- 
try. I am proud to be connected with an administration 
which within two years has actually prevented three wars. 
When the opposing armies of Ecuador and Peru were in 
sight of each other the telegraphic proposals of the United 
States brought about the tripartite mediation of the Argen- 

188 



Three Wars Prevented 189 

tine Republic, Brazil and the United States. The pro- 
posal was well received by Ecuador and Peru and they ab- 
stained from war. A few months ago the Dominican 
Republic and Hayti were at swords' points. The influence 
of the Government of the United States stayed their hands. 
Also w^ithin the last few months the good offices of the 
United States put an end to civil war in Honduras. Here 
are three actual achievements of the peace which is your 
ideal. These things the President and Secretary Knox 
have done. 

" Among other practical modes of pursuing the ideal of 
world's peace," he added, '' is the true meaning of what has 
been called ' dollar diplomacy.' Of course this term may 
be applied to commercial diplomacy. To-day international 
commerce is everywhere an important department of diplo- 
macy. In so far as our diplomacy is commercially suc- 
cessful we are proud of the fact. We are not above being 
practical and commercial, and, from the less material point 
of view, commerce means contact; contact means under- 
standing; and if one is worthy enough to be respected and 
liked, if understood, international commerce conduces 
powerfully to international sympathy. The most rudi- 
mentary business sense should dictate tact, sympathy and 
considerateness in dealing with foreign customers. So, 
in the broader view, every American business man or 
traveler, every student in university or school, who is in- 
considerate, supercilious or lacking in sympathetic apprecia- 
tion of his foreign associate, makes himself a missionary 
not of good-will but of ill-will, and so radiates an influence 
not for peace but for war. 

" But I use the newly-coined phrase of * dollar diplo- 
macy ' in another sense. It means using the capital of the 



190 The Progress of a United People 

country in the foreign field in a manner calculated to en- 
hance fixed national policies. It means the substitution of 
dollars for bullets. It means the creation of a prosperity 
which will be preferred to predatory strife. It means 
availing of capital's self-interest in peace. It means 
taking advantage of the interest in peace of those who 
benefit by the investment of capital. It recognizes that 
financial soundness is a potent factor in political stability; 
that prosperity means contentment and contentment means 
repose. 

*' This thought is at the basis of the policy of the United 
States in Central America and the zone of the Caribbean. 
There this policy is one of special helpfulness in a neighbor- 
hood where peace and progress are especially important to 
the United States, and where, moreover, they are due the 
aspirations and the splendid resources of the peoples of those 
neighboring republics. 

** In China the same principle has been invoked to enable 
the United States to take its share in the material, as it has 
in the moral and intellectual, development of that great 
empire. 

*' To the intellectual and moral development of the pro- 
gressive Ottoman Empire the United States has contrib- 
uted the greatest share. There, too, it is hoped that 
American commerce and enterprise will contribute. 

" So, also, ' dollar diplomacy ' is enabling the United 
States, through a loan by this country, Great Britain, France 
and probably Germany, to give practical effect to its ancient 
special obligations to Liberia, incidentally removing the 
causes of friction between that struggling republic and its 
powerful neighbors." 



Three Wars Prevented 191 

An accurate and true international understanding, Sec- 
retary Wilson added, is also a strong factor in promoting 
peace between nations. The newspapers of the world, he 
said, play an important part in formulating the foreign repu- 
tation of a nation. 

" It is almost to state a syllogism to say," Mr. Wilson 
said, '* that next to national character the greatest factor 
toward peace is true international understanding, and that, 
after diplomacy, the newspapers play the most important 
part in bringing about or retarding such true understanding. 
In the case of the United States, the true understanding 
of the American people and the true ideals and policies of 
their government is horribly hampered by the fact that, in 
the Far East for example, and still more in Latin America, 
almost everything bad and nothing good of us is reported 
in some section of the newspapers of most countries. 
Every lynching and scandal, every discreditable thing, 
which it is our unique custom to air so energetically, is 
repeated in its worst version by a section of the press of 
most of these countries. In the case of many countries 
which have important colonies engaged in business — for 
example, in Brazil, in Peru, in China — their nationals sup- 
port locally their own organs, which, probably often sub- 
sidized, carry on a patriotic service of their country. 

" Thinking of Mr. Carnegie's munificent gift, it occurs 
to me that the establishment and subsidy of four or five 
newspapers in Latin America and the Far East, wuth means 
to give adequate and respectable telegraphic news service 
and with a non-partizan and patriotic guidance of their 
policy by trustees who should be disassociated from the 
Government and independently representative of patriotic 



192 The Progress of a United People 

American citizenship, would be a splendid and proper means 
to that international true understanding which must be at the 
basis of peace." 

In conclusion Mr. Wilson discussed disarmament. He 
said: 

" I am sure the American people are protagonists of 
peace for a higher reason than the economy of disarmament. 
If ever a country could afford armaments it is ours. As 
a business proposition it w^ould save, in the unfortunate 
event of war, the appalling loss of life and money involved 
in headlong hasty preparations and also the time necessary 
to make a people already warlike also military. As a bur- 
den it could hardly exceed what is wholesome to bear, and 
the effort would focus the national spirit. And undoubt- 
edly the most practicable step toward the desired interna- 
tional spirit of humanity is to begin with the right national 
spirit. Some people even think that a large army and a 
system of military training would do more toward peace 
through instilling patriotic solidarity and discipline than 
it would for war through the temptation of having weap- 
ons handy. 

" We have laws against carrying concealed weapons be- 
cause a violent man w^ith a concealed weapon is more dan- 
gerous than a muscular Christian fully armed. Is a war- 
like nation, not fond of discipline and possessed of vast 
resources, less dangerous than one openly carrying its olive 
branch and also its arrows and thunderbolt? War springs 
from the human heart, not from the arsenal ; and the human 
heart, rather than the archives of diplomatic engagements, 
is still the only ultimate sure abode of peace. 

** The nation which can do most to secure international 



Three Wars Prevented ' 193 

peace must be the nation with the highest ideals plus the 
greatest mihtary efficiency. It is such nations that in striv- 
ing for and reaHzing their own advantage contribute the 
most toward advantaging their neighbors and the world.'' 



13 



AN EARLY AMERICAN DESCRIBED 

By J. Hector St. John de Crevecceur 
(1782) 

I wish I could be acquainted with the feehngs and 
thoughts which must agitate the heart and present them- 
selves to the mind of an enlightened Englishman, when he 
first lands on this continent [America]. . . . Here he 
sees the industry of his native country displayed in a new 
manner. . . . Here he beholds fair cities, substantial 
villages, extensive fields, an immense country filled with 
decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, 
where an hundred years ago all was wild, woody and un- 
cultivated ! . . . He is arrived on a new continent ; a 
modern society offers itself to his contemplation, different 
from what he had hitherto seen. It is not composed, as in 
Europe, of great lords who possess everything, and of a 
herd of people who have nothing. Here are no aristocrat- 
ical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesias- 
tical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few a very 
visible one; no great manufacturers employing thousands, 
no great refinements of luxury. The rich and the poor 
are not so far removed from each other as they are in 
Europe. Some few towns excepted, we are all tillers of 
the earth, from Nova Scotia to West Florida. We are a 
people of cultivators, scattered over an immense territory, 
communicating with each other by means of good roads 

194 



An Early American Described 195 

and navigable rivers, united by the silken bands of mild 
government, all respecting the laws, without dreading their 
power because they are equitable. We are all animated 
with the spirit of an industry which is unfettered and un- 
restrained, because each person works for himself. . . . 
A pleasing uniformity of decent competence appears 
throughout our habitations. The meanest of our log-houses 
is a dry and comfortable habitation. Lawyer or mer- 
chant are the fairest titles our towns afford ; that of a 
farmer is the only appellation of the rural inhabitants of 
our country. . . . Here man is free as he ought to be ; 
nor is this pleasing equality so transitory as many others 
are. Many ages will not see the shores of our great lakes 
replenished with inland nations, nor the unknown bounds of 
North America entirely peopled. Who can tell how far 
it extends? Who can tell the millions of men whom it will 
feed and contain ? for no European foot has as yet traveled 
half the extent of this mighty continent! 

The next wish of this traveler will be to know whence 
came all these people? They are a mixture of English, 
Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. 
From this promiscuous breed, that race now called Ameri- 
cans have arisen. . . . 

. . . By what invisible power has this surprising met- 
amorphosis been performed? By that of the laws and that 
of their industry. The laws, the indulgent laws, protect 
them as they arrive, stamping on them the symbol of adop- 
tion; they receive ample rewards for their labors; these ac- 
cumulated rewards procure them lands; those lands confer 
on them the title of freemen, and to that title every benefit 
is affixed which men can possibly require. This is the great 
operation daily performed by our laws. From whence 



196 The Progress of a United People 

proceed these laws ? From our government. Whence that 
government? It is derived from the original genius and 
strong desire of the people ratified and confirmed by the 
Crown. This is the great chain which links us all, this is 
the picture which every province exhibits. . . o 

. . . He is an American, wdio leaving behind him all 
his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from 
the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government 
he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an 
American by being received in the broad lap of our great 
Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted 
into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one 
day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the 
western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that 
great mass of arts, sciences, vigor, and industry which be- 
gan long since in the east ; they will finish the great circle. 
The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here 
they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of popu- 
lation which has ever appeared, and which will Iiereafter 
become distinct by the power of the difi*erent climates they 
inhabit. The American ought therefore to love this country 
much better than that wherein either he or his forefathers 
were born. Here the rewards of his industry follow wath 
equal steps the progress of his labor; his labor is founded 
on the basis of nature, self-interest; can it want a stronger 
allurement? Wives and children, wdio before in vain de- 
manded of him a morsel of bread, now, fat and frolic- 
some, gladly help their father to clear those fields whence 
exuberant crops are to arise to feed and to clothe them all ; 
without any part being claimed, either by a despotic prince, 
a rich abbot, or a mighty lord. Here religion demands but 
little of him; a small voluntary salary to the minister, and 



An Early American Described 197 

gratitude to God; can he refuse these? The American is 
a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must there- 
fore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions. From 
invohmtary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless 
labor, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, re- 
warded by ample subsistence. — This is an American. 




The mace 



NEW AMERICANS 
By Wardon Allan Curtis 




I am speaking of Wisconsin, because 
it happens to be the State where I have 
pursued my ethnological studies, and be- 
cause it epitomizes the central West. 
No other Western State has such a 
diversity of racial elements. Illinois 
alone, with its cjueer colony of Portu- 
guese Protestants at Jacksonville, has 
an element which Wisconsin has not. 
None but Wisconsin has Bulgarians and 
Flemings. It has an Indian population 
of over eight thousand. It is the great- 
est Welsh, Cornish, Norwegian, and Ger- 
man State. It has Icelanders with Minnesota ; Bohemians 
with Iowa; and French, Finns and Hol- 
landers with Michigan. The oldest 
and only purely Hungarian colony in 
America is on its soil, and the largest 
colony of Swiss. It has a native white 
element as old as the Knickerbockers, 
and even English-descended families 
who go back one hundred and fifty years 
on Wisconsin soil. 



German. 



Of all our old immigrant stocks, the 




German in the raw 



is the least person- 
198 



German-American. 



New Americans 



199 



able. Nor is he, superstition to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing, so big a man as the Yankee or the Irishman. Civil 
War enlistment statistics proved that our native stock 
averaged bigger men than 
any other element. Com- 
parative measurements of 
Eastern and Western col- 
leges give the effete East 
the advantage, due, I be- 
lieve, to the large per- 
centage of Europeans in 
the Western institutions, 
inferior in height to .the 
British nationalities. 

With the third genera- 
tion the Germans show a 
change. You can go into 
an old German town like 
Watertown, Wisconsin, 
where the third generation 
is now to the fore, and 
actually exclaim at the 
number of pretty girls you 
see, the pleasing result of 
three generations of Amer- A German bride. 

ican life upon the original uncomely material. Faces and 
forms of men and women have been refined. It is a new 
race mentally and physically. They are slimmer, cleaner- 
limbed, much taller. Their backs have a curve unknown 
to their grandparents, their eyes have a sparkle that never 
lighted the eyes of that poor peasantry which, until the 
tramp of the armies of Napoleonic France shook its fetters 




200 The Progress of a United People 




free, could not leave the soil upon which it was born. 
The Swiss have preserved both their nationality and their 
customs better than any other race 
in the West. Until recently they 
have had very little social intercourse, 
and intermarried almost not at all 
with other nationalities. In the case 
of all other nationalities in the third 
generation, social relations are very 
free, and that, of course, means inter- 
marriage and the building of a race 
which wil) have no hyphen before 
" American." 

On the border-lines of a row of 
German townships, meeting rows of 

Yankee, Irish, and Norse townships, the young people 

mingle socially. The first intermarriages are of foreigners 

with Yankees. All intermarry with 

Yankees, and have done so for a long 

time, but the intermarriage of Irisli and 

Germans has only lately begun, and tlie 

intermarriage of the two great kindred 

Teutonic stocks, Germans and Norse, 

does not take place at all as yet. 

At New Glarus, Wisconsin, you find 

the capital of the largest Swiss colony 

in the country, which, though it has 

been somewhat Americanized where its 

expanding borders impinge upon surrounding Yankees, 

Norse, and French, in the mother village still remains a bit 

of Switzerland. The romantic history of this colony and 



Swiss girl. 




Swiss-American. 



New Americans 



201 




[.. 



m 



its present aspect, richest of agricultural communities in 

America, its economic importance in 

Wisconsin and northern Ilhnois, 

founding as it did, the greatest in- 
dustry of that region, is something 

which deserves a monograph. 

There are many small men among 

these Swiss. There are also many tall 

ones, though I fancy the tall ones ap- 
pear taller by contrast. The French 

and the Swiss of this region are much 

alike in appearance, and have many of 

the same traits. The French are the 

only people the Swiss cannot buy out. 

Both are spreading and buying out the 

farmers of other nationalities. 

The Norwegian girls of the present generation and of 
the better class are very good-looking. 
They are by no means all blondes. 
Dark hair, with a glint of gold of the 
reddish tint of a beam of sinking sun 
against an eastern hill, is to be 
found among them. They have fine 
complexions, with a lovely blending 
of pink and cream. The beauty of 
the Norse woman is less likely 
to be in feature and eyes, as in 
the case of the Irish and the Welsh, 
than in her coloring. An amiable, 
healthv, finely colored face, evi- 



Swiss. 




Swiss girl. 



dence of good temper and good 



202 The Progress of a United People 





Norse-American. 



Norwegian. 



Norwegian. 



humor, is lovely in the sight of the ordinary human being. 
In another generation, if not sooner, it will all be Ameri- 
can. With the cessation of immigration to Wisconsin, the 
link with the Old World has been broken. The old tongues 
are heard no more. English is fast becoming the language 
of the churches, last stronghold of foreignism. The paper 
published in a foreign tongue will soon be a curiosity. 
The body of the central West will be of all races, but the 
spirit is and will remain the Americanism of Massachusetts 
of fifty years ago. The genius of the New England 
founders of these commonwealths is still the over-soul of 
the central West. 



THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN 

By a. Barton Hepburn 

President of the Chase National Bank, New York 

Does the pursuit of wealth cut the American man of 
business off from the old-fashioned relish of books and so- 
ciety? In other words, is he paying too big or dispro- 
portionate a price in time and strength for wealth and com- 
mercial prominence? My answer would be: Yes, beyond 
qtiestion. 

America possesses comparatively few old families whose 
established fortunes permit the choice of vocation and a 
judicious division of energies, devoting perhaps the major 
portion to business pursuits, but reserving sufficient time 
and strength for the development of the higher ideals of 

life. 

Family history in America has been pithily described as 
'' from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves in three generations." 
The fortune that results from the frugality, sobriety, and 
.intelligent application of the father may be preserved, pos- 
sibly added to, by the son, but the next generation enjoys, 
— recklessly, perhaps, — and the next squanders, so that the 
third generation is forced again into the ranks of bread- 
winners. 

This may result largely from our newness as a nation 
and from the ease with which fortunes are made. Age 
may modify somewhat, but in the absence of right of 

203 



204 The Progress of a United People 

primogeniture and a law of entail, abnormal accumula- 
tions of wealth are bound to find general distribution in a 
limited period of time. Pinched with poverty at the in- 
ception of one's career, habits of thrift and economy be- 
come ingrained, — a second nature, — and are a controlling 
influence through life. Others, to whom a reasonable 
start in life is given, find it difficult to retire from business 
even when ample fortune crowns their efforts. Retiring 
is difficult largely because there is no inviting field for them 
to enter. We have no leisure class devoted to the general 
purposes of life, whose ranks open invitingly and furnish 
a proper goal to the business man's ambition. 

In many instances the large fortunes that have been ac- 
cumulated and left to those who have had little or no part 
in the making become a menace to the community; for 
large fortunes, unwisely administered, are a source of 
danger to the public as well as to their possessors. Many 
recent exemplifications of the truth of this statement will 
readily present themselves. If the fathers of the spoiled 
children of luxury had practised a dignified, sensible leisure 
at the right time of life, the example might have descended 
with their money. Badness, however, is by no means the 
rule. Large fortunes generally are administered fairly 
within the lines of public approval. The compensatory 
influence attending upon great wealth is the general dis- 
position to devote a large portion to the public interest, as 
witness the private endowments of schools, colleges, li- 
braries, hospitals, and eleemosynary institutions generally. 

In New York Ave have one conspicuous instance of a 
man of great wealth, still very much in business, wdio 
practises on a grand scale those intellectual relaxations 
which in some degree are obtainable by every business 



The American Business Man 205 

man. He has collected treasures of literature and art 
which appeal only to the highest culture. His library con- 
tains rare, rich treasures; probably no other private library 
in the world can compare with it. And we have many men 
of great wealth who are devoting their large fortunes to 
the public good in a manner to be of continuing service to 
succeeding generations. The assiduity of their labor in 
disposing of part of their fortunes is quite equal to the 
labor of accumulation. Such men are far removed from 
the charge of sordidness, and such a term cannot well be 
applied to our men of w^ealth, as a whole. 

All I have said simply explains existing conditions; I 
do not seek to justify. Our business men ought to break 
away from trade exactions long before they do — ought 
to do so as a matter of volition and ethical judgment, rather 
than of physical necessity. They ought to get and give 
more enjoyment in life; they ought to do less for self and 
more for others; they ought to live more in books and 
more in the open and less at their desks, and realize better 
health and longer lives as a result. More and more culture 
in all its forms is exercising a growing influence, which 
must manifest itself in lessened effort along the fines of 
money-getting, and the devotion of more time on the part 
of our business men to the pursuits which naturally ac- 
company fortified leisure. Aristotle said " the end of labor 
is to gain leisure," and Aristotle was a wise man. 



THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 
By S. E. Forman 

Some one has said that in every high school and college 
there should be a '' professor of America." There is just 
a little boastfulness in the utterance, yet it nevertheless con- 
tains a sane suggestion. One of the chief tasks of this 
'' professor of America " v^ould be to train his pupils to 
distinguish between that which is American and that which 
is un-American. It should be confessed that as far as 
political matters are concerned such a training would be 
useful. It is good to be able to stamp instantly and un- 
erringly a political act or movement or sentiment as Ameri- 
can or as un-American. 

The student ought at this point to be able to tell what 
is truly American and what is not. It is American to trust 
the people, to have implicit faith in their ability to govern 
themselves; it is un-American to be always carping at 
democracy and predicting its downfall. It is American 
to recognize the moral and legal equality of men and 
to cherish the feelings of universal brotherhood; it is un- 
American to foster the spirit of aristocracy or of class 
hatred. It is American to give power abundantly to 
leaders who have been elected at the polls, for such leaders 
are real representatives ; it is un-American to submit tamely 
to the rule of a self-appointed "boss." To encourage and 
sustain a department of government when it is contending 

206 



The American Spirit 207 

for its rights is American; to aid in increasing the power 
of a usurping department is not. To accomplish a po- 
litical purpose by altering the Constitution in a formal, 
deliberate manner is American; to act in wanton disregard 
of constitutional restraint is not. It is x\merican to exalt 
the Union, but it is un-American to belittle the State. It 
is American for the State authority to uphold and maintain 
justice and law and order, but it is un-American to give 
to the State government the management of affairs that are 
purely local. It is American to use the political party as 
a means of government, but to regard party as the end 
of government is un-American. To enjoy every right 
which belongs to a free and enlightened people is Ameri- 
can, but it is un-American to insist upon a liberty that 
runs into license and riot. 

By adhering to the American way we shall preserve the 
spirit of the American government, and the spirit of a 
government is as important as its form. *' The letter kill^ 
eth, but the spirit giveth life." Indeed the form of the 
American government is only an outgrow^th of the spirit 
which animated its founders. The American fathers loved 
liberty and believed the people should have a controlling 
hand in government, and they drew the Constitution in 
trend with their affections and beliefs. The spirit of the 
fathers became the spirit of the generations which followed, 
and is the American spirit to-day. As long as that spirit 
shall survive the American citizen may say : " Under my 
government I know and exultingly feel both that I am 
free and that I am not dangerously free to myself or to 
others. I know that if I act as I ought no power on earth 
can touch my life, my liberty, my property. I have that 
inward and dignified consciousness of my own security 



2o8 The Progress of a United People 

and independence which constitutes, and is the only thing 
which does constitute, the proud and comfortable sentiment 
of freedom in the human breast. I know, too, and bless 
God for my own mediocrity ; I know that I cannot, by any 
special favor or by popular delusion or by oligarchical 
cabal, elevate myself above a certain very limited point 
so as to endanger [incur the risk of] my own fall or the 
ruin of my country. I know there is a constitution that 
keeps things fast in their place : it is made to us and we are 
made to it." {Edmund Burke.) 

THE DITTIES OF CTTTZENSHIP. 

The duties of citizenship are always equal to its rights. 
If I can hold a man to his contracts, I ought (/ oive it) 
to pay my own debts ; if I may worship ag I please, I 
ought to refrain from persecuting another on account of 
his religion; if my own property is held sacred, I ought to 
regard the property of another man as sacred; if the 
government deals fairly with me and does not oppress me, 
I ought to deal fairly with it and refuse to cheat it; if I 
am allowed freedom of speech, I ought not to abuse the 
privilege: if I have a right to be tried by a jury, I ought to 
respond wdien I am summoned to serve as a juror; if I 
have a right to my good name and reputation, I ought not 
to slander my neighbor; if government shields me from in- 
jury I ought to be ready to take up arms in its defense. 

Civil rights are inseparable from civil duties; the con- 
tinued and full enjoyment of the former depends upon 
the fulfilment of the latter. Since duty is largely a mat- 
ter of morals, good citizenship also would seem to be a 
question of morals. In the last analysis this is true. 




14 



THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE 
By Brander Matthews 

One Monday in the spring of 1906, a New York morn- 
ing paper recorded the fact that " ten thousand men, women, 
and children, immigrants from all sections of the globe, 
were inside New York Harbor before sundown yesterday, 
as many more were on big immigrant vessels reported 
ofif Sandy Hook, and three times ten thousand on other 
vessels little more than two hundred miles from port. All 
told, at least fifty-two thousand immigrants will have 
reached port by Thursday morning, the largest number 
that has yet come to New York at one time." The new- 
comers belonged to many different nationalities. Some 
came from Great Britain and Ireland, some from Germany 
and Austria, some from Russia and Poland, and more from 
Italy. The reporter noted that there were also a few 
French and a few Arabians. 

More than fifty thousand in four days ! And these were 
only the advance guard of the host that followed fast all 
through the lengthening days of the spring months. Men 
and women and children from every part of Europe, even 
from Africa and from Asia, poured into New York, to 
scatter themselves throughout the United States. A few 
of them intended to work only during the summer, and 
then to return whence they came; but the most of them 
were resolved to lead a new life in the New World. They 

210 



The American of the Future 211 

wished to better themselves, and they did not pause to 
ask whether we wanted them or whether their coming was 
for our good, also. They left us to ask these Questions, 
and to find such answers as we could. 

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, 
And through them presses a wild motley throng — 
Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes, 
Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho, 
Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt and Slav, 
Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn ; 
These bringing with them unknown gods and rites. 
Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws. 



O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well 
To leave the gates unguarded ? 



For so of old 
The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome, 
And where the temples of the Caesars stood, 
The lean wolf unmolested made her lair. 

In these lofty lines Aldrich sharply phrased what many 
Americans vaguely feared. The motley horde that invades 
us hopes to better its condition; but what of our condition? 
What effect will Malayan and Scythian and Slav have 
upon us? Are they worthy to be welcomed within our 
commonwealth ? Will they trample America as the throng- 
ing Goth and Vandal trampled Rome? Must we dread 
the coming of a day when the lean wolf, unmolested, shall 
make her liar in the deserted streets where once the many 
churches stood, the stately libraries, and the frequent school- 
houses ? 



212 The Progress of a United People 

But the danger-signal has been heeded, and the gates are 
no longer unguarded. The " featureless figures of the 
Hoang-Ho " are denied admission; and the wisdom of this 
exclusion is evident, however harsh we may sometimes 
seem in its application. These Orientals have a civiliza- 
tion older than ours, hostile to ours, exclusive, and re- 
pellent. They do not come here to throw in their lot with 
us. They abhor assimilation, and they have no desire to be 
absorbed. They mean to remain aliens; they insist upon 
being taken back when they are dead; and we do well to 
keep them out while they are alive. 

We exclude also with equal wisdom the maimed and 
the halt and the blind. In a single year we have sent back 
whence they came twelve thousand undesirable immigrants, 
some of them insane, some of tliem diseased, but most of 
them mere weaklings likely soon to become dependent. 
We have accepted the principle that it is our duty to de- 
fend our coasts against an undesirable invasion. We are 
glad still to provide a refuge for the oppressed, but only 
when those who demand hospitality are fit to be incorpor- 
ated in our body politic, and only when they are willing 
loyally to accept the laws under which they seek shelter. 
Of late we have been putting hard questions to all new 
arrivals at our ports, and if they have no answers ready, 
the gates are closed in their faces. We have seen in time 
the danger of too lax a liberality, and we have recognized 
the sagacity of the late Mayo Smith's saying, that those 
" who desire that the United States should discharge the 
function of a world-asylum forget that asylums are not 
governed by their inmates." 

But there are those amone us who are not satisfied with 



The American of the Future 213 

this setting up of barriers against the unfit, and who see 
a menace to American standards in the admission even of 
the physically fit, if they come from alien stocks. There are 
those — and they are not a few — who would keep out the 
" men from the Volga and Tartar steppes " and all " bring- 
ing with them unknown gods and rites." Willing enough 
still to welcome Teuton and even Celt, they see peril to our 
citizenship in granting it to Slav and to Scythian, with 
" tiger-passions, here to stretch their claws." They look 
askant at New York, with its immense masses of imper- 
fectly assimilated foreigners, with its Little Italy, with its 
mysterious China-town, with its Syrian quarter, with its 
half million of Russian Jews. They ask themselves 
whether the metropolis of the United States can any longer 
be considered an American city. 

To this last question the answer is easy. New York 
is quite as American to-day as it ever has been in any of its 
three centuries. Diversity of blood has always been its 
dominant characteristic. As one of its historians has 
tersely asserted, " no sooner has one set of varying ele- 
ments been fused together than another stream has been 
poured into the crucible. There probably has been no 
period in the city's growth during which the New Yorkers 
whose parents were born in New York formed the ma- 
jority of the population ; and there never has been a time 
when the bulk of the citizens were of English blood." 
The history of the metropolis from which these quotations 
are taken was written by Theodore Roosevelt, a typical 
New Yorker, as he is a typical American ; and he illustrates 
in his own person this commingling of stocks. He is of 
Dutch descent, with other ancestors who were Huguenot 



214 The Progress of a United People 

and Scotch-Irish; and he has declared that so far as he 
himself is aware, he has not a drop of English blood in 
his veins. 

The New Englanders were swiftly assimilated, as the 
Huguenots had been a century earlier; and they, in turn, 
disliked and dreaded the Irish invasion that soon followed, 
and the later German invasion that came before and during 
the Civil War. But in that bitter conflict the Irish and 
the Germans and their children proved themselves stanch 
Americans; they revealed their belief that this was not only 
a good land to live in, but a good country to die for. And 
the Irish and the Germans in their turn also disliked and 
dreaded the more recent invasion of Italians and Russian 
Jews; and they joined with the older New Yorkers in 
wondering whether these strange newcomers were not unfit 
for the citizenship which had been generously granted to 
them. Yet there is scarcely a larger proportion of for- 
eigners in the population of New York at the beginning 
of the twentieth century than there was at the end of the 
seventeenth, nor are the dangerous elements proportion- 
ately larger than they were then. The fire still glows 
beneath the crucible, and the process of fusing is as rapid 
and as complete to-day as ever it has been in the past. 
The children are the flux for this fusing: they are taken 
captive first by the schools, and then the public libraries 
bind them fast; and finally the young folk react on their 
parents. Sooner or later the foreigners are made over; 
they are born anew; and they have a proud consciousness 
that they have come into their birthright. 

It needs to be noted that two of the most distinguished 
electrical inventors of America are of Slavonic birth. That 
shrewd observer of social conditions. Miss Jane Addams, 



The American of the Future 21^ 

has asserted that we talk far too loosely about our im- 
migrants. We use the phrase '' the scum of Europe " 
and other unwarrantable words, " without realizing that 
the undeveloped peasant may be much more valuable to us 
here than the more highly developed but also more highly 
specialized towai-dweller, who may much less readily de- 
velop the acquired characteristics which the new environ- 
ment demands." 

" The way to compare men is to compare their respec- 
tive ideals," said Thoreau ; " the actual man is too complex 
to deal with." In some mysterious fashion we Americans 
have imposed our ideals on the Irish and on the Germans, 
as we are now imposing them on the Italians and on the 
Russian Jews. The children and the grandchildren of 
these ignorant immigrants learn to revere Washington and 
Lincoln, and they take swift pride in being Americans. 
They thrill in response to the same patriotic appeals which 
move us of the older stocks; and wdien New York cele- 
brated the centenary of the Constitution, nowhere were the 
portraits of the Father of the Country more frequent 
than in Little Italy and in the Ghetto. When the Presi- 
dent of the United States declared that a certain friend 
of his was " the most useful citizen of New York," he 
named not a native, but a man w^ho was by birth a Dane; 
and if any one with equal opportunity for knowing should 
undertake to draw up a list of the five most useful citizens 
of New York, he would have to include also one Hebrew 
of German birth. If this observer should extend the list 
to ten, he would be forced to set down the name of an- 
other German Hebrew whose service to the public good 
has been quite as indisputable. 

The census records the number of those of foreign birth, 



2l6 The Progress of a United People 

and also those who are of foreign parentage; and these 
figures seem to suggest that there exists among us a mass 
of undigested aliens. But in so far as the statistics do 
suggest this, they convey a false impression. The boys 
and girls of Little Italy speak English as fluently as they 
speak Italian, and while they salute the flag in school, in 
the street they amuse themselves with '' Little Sally 
Waters " and with the traditional games of Anglo-Saxon 
youth. 

The American of to-day, whatever his descent, has most 
of the characteristics of the American of yesterday. Ideals 
endure, and aspirations have not been blunted by time or 
turned aside by alien influences. 

It is true enough that the makers of America were 
mainly of British origin. Benjamin Franklin and Wash- 
ington Irving were the sons of immigrants, one English 
and the other Scotch. But, from the very beginning, the 
admixture of other elements was abundant, most obvious 
in New York, but perceptible even in New England. Be- 
fore the Revolution, besides the Dutch in New York, there 
were Swedes in New Jersey. In Pennsylvania there were 
Germans and Scotch-Irish, and in New York and South 
Carolina there were Huguenots, and no single stock has 
contributed to our citizenship so many men of ability in 
proportion to its numbers as this sturdy and stalwart group 
of French Protestants. Thus we see that there is no basis 
for the prevalent belief that the people of the United States 
were once of almost purely English descent, and that they 
have been diluted by foreign admixture only since the war 
of 1812. In the Louisiana Purchase and in the Northwest 
Territory there were many French settlers, and men of 
Spanish descent were incorporated by the acquisition of 



The American of the Future 217 

Texas and of California. The commingling of these many 
bloods during our first century of national life must be 
more or less responsible for the divergence now obvious 
between American ideals, American standards, and Ameri- 
can tendencies, on the one hand, and British ideals, British 
standards, and British tendencies, on the other. Both sets 
are derived from the same root — from the ideals, the 
standards and the tendencies of the older Anglo-Saxon 
stock, transplanted in England from the Teutonic main- 
land, and stimulated by the commingled Hebrew and Greek 
and Roman ideals of the church. 

It is well for us to recall the fact that the English race 
itself was of many mingled strains, Celtic and Teutonic, 
welded into unity at last, and achieving its richest expres- 
sion under Elizabeth. But while the British have been 
inbreeding for centuries now, with only occasional enrich- 
ment by alien stocks, Spanish-Hebrew, Huguenot, and Ger- 
man, we Americans have been absorbing vigorous foreign 
blood; and to this infusion must be credited some portion 
of the differences between the subjects of the British King 
and the citizens of the American republic. These dif- 
ferences are abundant and they are evident, and there is no 
need to catalogue them here. 

It finds fit expression in lavish giving to public service, 
and it leads also to the preservation of natural beauty and 
of the sacred places of our brief history. 

When we consider all these things carefully, we cannot 
help w^ondering whether we have not been guilty of flagrant 
conceit in our assumption that we could not possibly profit 
by any infusion of other bloods than the Teutonic. We 
find ourselves face to face with the question whether the 
so-called Anglo-Saxon stock is of a truth so near to per- 



2i8 The Progress of a United People 

fection that any admixture is certain to be harmful. We 
find ourselves doubting whether this stock has always done 
so well that it has an undisputed right to a halo on demand. 
Much as we owe to England, we have other debts also; 
and even New England, of which we are all justly proud, 
is not now the focus of the whole United States, — however 
much we may have profited in the past by the lofty ex- 
ample of Emerson and Lowell. 

The strength of the founders of the American republic 
lay chiefly in character. It is not by brilliancy, by intellect, 
or even by genius that Washington and Jay and John 
Adams impressed themselves on their fellow-citizens in 
Virginia, in New York, and in Massachusetts. Ability 
they had in abundance, no doubt ; but it was by character 
that they conquered, by their moral individuality. And it 
is the grossest conceit for us to assume that character is 
the privilege or the prerogative of any single stock. We 
have a right to hope and even to believe that whatever we 
may lose by the commingling of the future, by the admix- 
ture of other racial types than the Teutonic and the Celtic, 
will be made up to us by what we shall thereby gain. Our 
type may be a little transformed, but it is not at all likely 
to be deteriorated. 



INDEX 



Aeroplane, 125-134 

American business man, 203-205 

Character, 38 

Citizenship, 208 

family history, 203 

home, 4 

IManners, 5 

of the future, 210-218 

of to-day, 216 

Spirit, 50, 206-209 
Americans, new, 198-202 
An American, 6 
Arid America, 36-50 
Arizona, 47-50 
Associated Press, 141-145 
Atlantic Cable, 4 

Bosses and the people, 29-32 

California, 42-45, 177 

Census, 146-159 

Centennial hymn, 2 

Cervera, Admiral, 85. 86, 89 

Charleston, S. C, 9-15 

Civil Service reform, 26-28, 33-35 

Civic improvement, 160-178 

Clark, Capt. Charles E., 78-92 

Cleveland, Grover, 33-35 

Colorado, 41, 42 

Colored people, 9-15 

Conservation, 36-50, 51-53 

Culebra cut, 120 

Custer, 56, 64-69 

Dewey, Admiral, 70, '/(i, 86, 93-106 



Forest protection, 51-53 



Forman's U. S. History, 3 

German-American, 198, 199 
Growth of U. S., 146-159 

Historic preservation, 162 

Illiteracy, 158 

Immigration, 154, 155, 210-216 

Indian Warfare, 54-63 

Indians, 64-69 

Irrigation, 36-50 

Ku Klux Klan, 16-25 

Leisure, 205 

iManila Bay, battle of, 93-106 

Norse-American, 201-202 

Oregon, the, '/2, 78-92 

Panama canal, 5, 107-124 
Peace vs. War, 179-187, 188-193 
Philippines, The, 70, ']()< 
Population. See Census (146-159) 
Progress since the War, 3-8 

Reconstruction, 7, 8, 9-15. 16-25 

Salt Lake, 39, 40 

Sampson, Admiral, 74 

Santiago, 75 

San Francisco, 117 

Scenic preservation, 160-178 

Schley, Admiral, 74 



219 



220 Index 

Sitting Bull, 56-60 Western railroad, 135-140 

Spanish War, 70-77, 78^2, 93-106 Wisconsin, 198-202 

Steamship, 5 Wright Brothers, 125-134 
Street and highway, 175-178 
Swiss-American, 200-201 

Yankee teacTier in the South, 9-15 

War and peace, 179-187, 188-^193 Young, Brigham, 39, 40 



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